


Suppression of the Mind

by Amrita_Vein



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Accidental Sith moments, Angst, Art restoration as mental health therapy, Art to accompany text, Elements of mystery and horror, Eli wears Chiss tactical armor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Ezra grows up, Ezra “emo space hermit” Bridger, Falling In Love Again, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Long-Haired Thrawn, M/M, Memory Loss, Never cross the navigators, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Post-Book: Star Wars: Thrawn Series: Treason, Post-Star Wars: Rebels, Pride comes before a fall, Reconciliation, Sickfic, Skywalker grief counseling services, Sort of like 50 first dates in outer space, Supernatural brain injury, Thrass is a good brother, Thrawn examines his hubris, Thrawns idea of a date was reprogramming a torture droid, also our heros come by the end of this, eli vanto is a badass, everybody needs a hug, jedi devilry, jedi field trip, kind of a Groundhog Day situation, sad cuddles, themes of growth and forgiveness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22288687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein
Summary: Sometimes, when you leap, you fall.Years after the battle of Lothal, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo is still missing, in fact, he can't even find himself.Eli Vanto has desperately been searching for the man he loves. In a surreal hellscape of all of his fears made manifest, he finds an injured Chiss. While biometric scans confirm him to be the lost Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo of the Seventh Fleet, but everything about him is—wrong. Something terrible has happened to Thrawn in the time between the Grysk incursion and the discovery on the planet. Eli Vanto is pushed beyond his limits as he fights to make good on an oath he swore while Thrass, Thrawn, and Ezra Bridger fight with demons of the mind that have been ignored fortoo long, growing strong and powerful on a diet of fear.Sometimes, in order to travel forward, one needs to take a step back. Back to where it all began. Lothal.(Or: Fifty First Dates in Outer Space)
Relationships: Thrass | Mitth'ras'safis & Eli Vanto, Thrass | Mitth'ras'safis & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 43
Kudos: 68





	1. Prologue-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn’s reflections after the Battle of Lothal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! 
> 
> This story takes place in five acts and is loosely structured around the classical Hero’s Journey with a fair bit of tragic elements thrown in as we examine themes of hubris, honesty, and the responsibility of love. It has been a fun challenge to play with structure and syntax on this piece and let things get a little weird. You’re definitely in for some major angst, but the darkness only helps bring out the light at the end. 
> 
> Prologue- Stars  
> Act One- A Crash of Feeling  
> Act Two- The Planet  
> Act Three- Lysatra   
> Act Four- Ruins of the Past  
> Act Five- Sun and Sky  
> Epilogue- Stars
> 
> If you’d like to listen along to some instrumental music while reading this prologue, I suggest copying and pasting this Spotify link:  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/47ZWr1Nb0PUgmKgyg5JkgO?si=kbzEkNoqRbikcKvD8kZnwQ  
> I listened to this three minute long piano piece on repeat while writing this chapter and love the bittersweet, reflective quality of it, maybe you will too?
> 
> Without further rambling? Here we go!

_"Whatever happens next happens to the both of us…”_

The tentacles held him tightly, constricting more with each breath, squeezing the air from his lungs in a crushing embrace. There was no fighting this. He could only hope to endure whatever fate awaited him.

_‘Many arms in a cold embrace.’ The creature was right. This is it, my life ends here._

_Eli…_

_There was so much more I had yet to do. I wanted… I, I…_

Frantic, panicked now, panicked- _a warrior does not panic, and yet, here I am_ \- gasps for air, an increasingly limited commodity in the vice grip holding him.

_If only I had told him… accepted his offer… left when he…_

Flashes of moments blazed before him. His brother Thrass as a child, holding his hand at their parents’ funeral, sneaking him a secret smile, the tiniest reassurance that he wasn’t alone in the hellscape of his grief. Their shared pride and determination being named Trial-Born. The thrill of his first command. ‘I don’t dislike you.’ A speeder ride on Lysatra, kisses and a blazing sunrise. Two bodies twined between sheets and a keening moan, hot lips on his neck. Holding a crying skywalker, her tears hot on his shoulder and rage in his heart. The creature on Atollon. Eli’s hesitant proposal before… then his desperate pleas to return home with him after the grysk incursion and incident with Savit.

  
“ _Please, return home with me Thrawn.”_

He should have returned then. _Home._

_Forgive me, Eli._

There went— something. In him, broken. Hard to tell what exactly in the haze of pain and despair. More sound and motion. Overwhelming. The sharp, grinding crunch of his bones against the dull and desperate roar of the ship’s hull deforming. Alarms to abandon ship fading in and out with the pounding, erratic thud of his heartbeat in his ears. The jedi child, straining in concentration. A brilliant blaze of blue light and sound… movement?

_Deafening_.

His perception turning to haze, reality blurring at the edges of his vision. _This is how it will end._ A perfect symphony of destruction. Chaos. Senses fading and screaming all at once. The light. The familiar weightlessness of traveling through hyperspace. No, that cannot be what death is like. Death is oblivion, nothing. This… this is still sensation, still… _alive_.

And then a tsunami of G Forces colliding against the _Chimaera_. The ship screamed and burned. She was collapsing in on herself. The Jedi child collapsed in exhaustion. A boom and a pop. A sudden change in air pressure. _Wind._

Free 

fall

  
and 

  
oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! All aboard the AngstExpress. Originally, I wasn't planning to include any POVs from Thrawn from before The Incident, but I've recently read a few angsty fics and drabbles by silent_bard, chaos-monkeyy, and Jessko that inspired this chapter. I was particularly inspired by writing posted by Silent_bard on tumblr that got me thinking about what Thrawn would be thinking in this moment of total defeat and well, that got me thinking what would it be like for Thrawn to lose his ability to have control over his mind. To not have faith in his greatest strength. To not have a plan or the ability to plan. Weeks after bouncing ideas around, this is what we get. This will be short and (painfully) sweet.
> 
> Say hi on tumblr! I'm @wildspaceyokel


	2. Act One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chimaera meets its reckoning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! If you would like to play a tune to go along with this chapter, I suggest the following:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/1Ny6vWtIlFvPMFLZzUjrlB?si=92nRhEt3SseNr_zT6FdOyg
> 
> I listened to this song on repeat while writing this chapter. It is about 3 minutes long and instrumental.

**Act One: A Crash of Feeling**

**I. _ISD Chimaera, s_ omewhere in the Unknown Regions, 0 BBY**

  
Ezra’s eyes blinked open.

_I did it, Kanan. I actually did it…_

And the ship screamed around him. The purgills had left him in the gravity well of— something, and that Something was calling out to the disgraced Imperial flagship. _Come now and meet your destruction._

 _Not today,_ Ezra thought. _This is not where my story ends_.

Calling out to the force to protect him one more time, the young jedi rolled up and groaned into an athletic stance. He braced for the impact and focused his remaining energy on creating a soft pocket of air around him.

Why wasn’t the Force cooperating?! This should have been a much simpler task than coaching the purgill through hyperspace, he had to do something what could it b—?

_No. Not him, anyone but him._

And Ezra knew it had to be him.

He reached out with the Force toward the battered and prone Grand Admiral and willed the pocket of air to insulate him too. _Not that he deserves it but the Force has never steered me wrong before._

Their two bodies levitated slightly, like bugs suspended in resin. The _Chimaera_ hurtled down to meet her destiny, alarms blaring on the bridge and shrieks of tearing durasteel outside..

The impacts with the surface sounded like a thousand nails dragged on a broken slate, of the storm the Bendu had conjured, of every dark thing in the universe conspiring to rend reality asunder.

When the Star Destroyer finally settled on the planet’s surface, the young jedi looked around to find that he and the grand admiral were the only two life forms present, the rest of the crew must have evacuated or been sucked out the shattered transparasteel windows. Thrawn looked like he was unconscious, trapped under a fallen ceiling panel. His life signal was weak but stable, burning dimly in the force.

And that is when Ezra felt it around him.

It was as if his entire body was covered in rapidly-forming boils that ruptured as quickly as they formed. Over and over and over again. Thousands of life forces were blazing desperately and then snuffed out around him.

He spun around the ruined bridge, desperately searching for answers, anything that could absolve him of his rapidly spiraling guilt. Yet there was no salvation in the data before him. Any console that was still operating flashed red warnings. System failure alerts harmonized with dull booms deep below his feet.

A cross section display of the ship showed the progression of a rapid conflagration that wiped out the lower decks between the docking bay to the stern of the ship. While the bow of the ship was… completely missing, it appeared to have broken off during the impact.

The conflagration extinguished itself as rapidly as it began, having consumed all available oxygen behind locked bulkhead doors.

The next wave of rolling death signatures was even more painful for Ezra.

With the explosive fire, he could feel the deaths like rapid pops. The depressurization and suffocation deaths were slower and more pronounced. He could hear their last requests and wishes. Final prayers to a god that would not answer. There was nothing he could do, the codes to control the pressure and circulation systems were beyond him

  
This

  
Was

  
His

  
Fault.

  
These deaths were on his hands. His. Hands.

_No no no no no no no no no no no no no NO!_

He stumbled back from the display and looked down at his shaking hands. Breaths in heavy, erratic gasps. No! This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen! Taking them away from Lothal wasn’t supposed to mean taking everyone, there had to be thousands of them on the ship, away from life. Right?

Right!?

Stars, damn it all! Ezra suddenly could not breathe. He needed to leave. Now. 

And he could still feel more of them. Each death was a ripple in a pool that gradually became a tsunami.

* * *

  
He glanced back at the ship display. The main docking bay had been completely incinerated and secondary hangar was gone but maybe there was something, anything, else? 

Finally, the young man found it, marked as ‘Auxiliary Deployment’ it was a small hangar several decks below the bridge, something that important people probably used. The way to the hangar looked straightforward enough, it looked like Ezra could access it through the turbo lifts and some crawlspaces. 

He picked up the blaster from the unconscious grand admiral and shot at the door controls. The doors slid open and the young jedi was assaulted with a great woosh of air as the pressure equalized inside the ship.

Ezra stepped over the threshold into the corridor and he could feel it against his skin.

The heavy relentless press of death around him. Spirits begging for release. The _Chimaera_ was a massive unmarked grave.

He lurched over and vomited on the steel plate below him. All this death…

And yet, one weak life force was still behind him. A life force he’d forgotten about and in doing so had also assigned to death’s custody. No. He could at least try with this one, he had to, even if he would rather do anything but, it would be the smallest amount of atonement he could provide for these people. To try and save the one life that remained.

Ezra stepped back onto the bridge and looked at the ship’s display until he spotted his query: the nearest medical bay.

There was an officers medbay conveniently on the way to the auxiliary hangar. Ezra dashed to it, his mental energy focused on blocking out the oppressive whispers of death that haunted the silent corridors. He didn’t look down at the bodies prone on the floor, he couldn’t.

The human staff in the medbay faced the same gruesome death that the rest of the _Chimaera_ ’ crew suffered: rapid pressure and gravitational shifts causing internal hemorrhaging. It looked like they suffered.

“Greetings, sir!” A droid chirped, dragging Ezra from his mind. 

“It pleases us to see a survivor. Our programming was not sufficient to treat the causalities on board. How may we be of assistance?”

* * *

Ezra dragged a stretcher back to the bridge and rolled the unconscious Chiss onto it. This was the first time since the purgill arrived that Ezra truly looked at the older man, his face slack and bruised, strangely soft in spite of the sharp angles of his profile. The man’s normally blue skin was a pale grey where it hadn’t been mottled with dark violet bruises. Blood leaked from his mouth and oozed from a large gash on his forehead. Ezra thumbed open the man’s eyelid to see one unfocused red eye. In this state, the great Grand Admiral of the Seventh Fleet looked no different than the hundreds of battered refugees Ezra had encountered in his journeys. He almost felt sorry for him. 

_Kanan’s dead because of him. All of these people are dead because of him, uggh!_

_I’m only doing this because I think the Force wants me to!_

Groaning, Ezra stood up, programmed the stretcher to levitate, and follow him to the medbay.

“Okay droids! Do your thing, you can take him from here, right? I—” his voice cracked and broke “I need to go now.”

And with that, Ezra Bridger left the medbay.

* * *

Security footage showed the young jedi break out into a run as he traveled from the medbay to the auxiliary hangar. Moments later, a Lambda shuttle took off and left the wreck of the Chimaera.

He never looked back.

* * *

In the _Chimaera’s_ officer's medbay, attended to by droids, the lone survivor eventually wakes up. 

He stays very still for a long time, observing his surroundings. He subtly flexes his limbs, testing the strength of his body, and searching for hidden restraints. There are none. Nothing is holding him back here. His body is whole and strong, he is dressed in clean, nondescript clothing. His red eyes discreetly take in the room, scanning for threats and weaknesses around him.

This space is... familiar and yet, not. He should not know the patterns of this place the way he does. It reminds him of hazy dreams, an old story tangled in the depths of his mind. He will find no answers here.

In a decisive, fluid motion, he rose from the hospital bed and ran from the medbay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Act One could almost be considered part 2 of the prologue. The real emotional meat of this story is yet to come in Act Two. Next up we will find out what becomes of the lone patient who ran out of the medbay. Chapters will get longer from here and sappier.
> 
> Thanks for following along and come say hello on tumblr, I’m @wildspaceyokel :)


	3. Act Two Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eli discovers what happened to the Chimaera and Thrawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has pretty detailed descriptions of a violent crash landing, some gore and horror-type elements, questionable interpretations of physics and spaceship safety procedures, made-up medical stuff, and a whole lot of Eli's heart breaking.

**Act 2: The Planet**

**I. The Planet, 0 ABY**

_ISDChimaera.surveillance.video.feed.0-04053.OfficersMedical.camera03._

A man lies prone on a medical examination bed. He is connected to several machines and monitoring devices. A nurse droid rolls over and performs a scan. 

  
  
  


The droid rolls away. Machines continue to beep. The man stirs but does not wake. 

  
  
  


The droid returns. The droid performs the scan. The droid departs. The droid returns again.

  
  
  


The artificial light cycles from bright to dark and bright once more.

  
  
  


The droid returns. The machines continue to beep. The man stirs but does not wake.

  
  
  
  
  


The man wakes up. He runs.

  
  
  
  


_ISDChimaera.surveillance.video.feed.0-04053.DeckTwoCorridor5.camera07._

The man sprints down the hallway, clearly intent on a destination. He carries himself like an animal being hunted, hugging his body tight against the walls as he rounds corners and is constantly looking over his shoulder. His chest heaves with exertion and his expression is one of tight desperation. 

  
  
  


_ISDChimaera.surveillance.video.feed.0-04053.DeckTwoCorridor2.camera01. _

The man stands outside the entrance to the Grand Admiral’s personal quarters. 

.

  
  


The man stands outside the entrance to the Grand Admiral’s personal quarters. 

  
  


.

  
  


The man stands outside the entrance to the Grand Admiral’s personal quarters. 

  
  


.

.

  
  


The man’s posture wilts. He turns away from the door to the Grand Admiral’s quarters and strides down the corridor.

  
  
  
  


**II. Orbiting the Planet, 6 ABY**

Captain Eli’van’to of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet wiped his eyes and double-checked that all the numbers on the display matched up with his calculations and the origin vector of the weak distress signal he’d located. His attempts to hail the _Chimaera_ on all possible Imperial channels had gone unanswered, as had his generalized universal all-frequencies contact request and his classified CEDF infrared signaling beam. At this point, he was trying to tell himself that his numbers must be wrong or perhaps his ship’s sensors were broken, anything that could explain the data before him in some possible way other than this.

There was no one alive on the planet.

His ship’s sensors detected no humanoid life forms in the wreckage, only decomposing organic matter and assorted small creatures that appeared to have established residency in the air recirculation ducts. There were no established settlements elsewhere on the planet that his sensors could detect and unless the survivors were walking through the forests on foot or had found some very deep, lead-shielded, sensor-proof _caves_ to live in, there was no sign of sentient life at all.

Eli’s ship, _The Vinsomer,_ a small espionage corvette, would have detected any settlements on the surface. After all, it was designed by the CDF to be a stealth reconnaissance ship for delicate missions and was thus outfitted with some of the best tech in the Ascendancy. Thrawn himself had passed on the schematics of Governor Tarkin’s _Carrion Spike_ which had served as the base model for the _Vinsoner’s_ design.

Having completed a detailed scan of the crash site, sensors began cataloging the surrounding area in both a standard and tight-mesh search grid and still no humanoid-sized life forms were detected. The _Vinsomer’s_ sensing equipment was far too advanced and too new to be faulty, so short of taking an entire intelligence task force to the ground and making an official military operation out of the recovery mission, this was the most data Eli would be capable of collecting from orbit. 

Wringing his hands in frustration and then clenching his teeth in annoyance-- hadn’t he purged all those weak human emotional tells from his behavior by now? Eli would have to accept the hollow silence on the comms and land on the planet to gather more information. Perhaps the survivors had fled the wreckage and were somewhere out in space? There were definitely enough shuttles and other space-worthy craft aboard the _Chimaera_ to field a small army after all, unless they had all been deployed during the Lothal operation— Eli still couldn’t believe that space whales a teenage human Skywalker had been responsible for the Seventh Fleet’s demise. But perhaps the survivors were in dire straights and must have left in a hurry or the simply forgot to update their distress beacon. Elaborate and unlikely scenarios took root in Eli’s mind and grew like frantic weeds, there was no way that— there _had_ to be some logical explanation for this data, there _had_ to. 

This was it, time to see what clues he could find regarding the _Chimaera’s_ fate. He keyed in a quick transmission with his coordinates to Commander Vah’nya “LOCATED TARGET. COLLECTING DATA.” and then piloted the _Vinsomer_ down through the atmosphere to the wreckage of what had once been his home.

Seeing the crash site on his ship’s display was one thing, but seeing the actual wreckage through the viewport with his own eyes was another experience entirely. Years of military life helped him keep his focus and eyes sharp while his heartbeat slowed to a glacial pace and deafening roar.

There was a giant, ugly scar carved onto the planet's surface. While the forces of time had allowed nature to reclaim some of the charred earth, the debris field and burns on the exposed rock would linger for centuries to come. In approximately a half-mile circumference around the downed ship was a circle of flattened, burnt, and dead trees. Eli could see a trail of charred forests, exposed earth, carved hills, and dammed rivers for miles beyond the wreck in a brutal arcing curve.

The _Chimaera_ itself had fractured into two main pieces, looking to have split in half at the main docking bay. Imperial Star Destroyers simply were not equipped to handle ground landings gracefully. While ISDs did have repulsorlift thrusters and the crew was trained in a number of emergency ground landing procedures substantially less brutal than this, it appeared that neither technology nor technique were on the _Chimaera's_ side when she crashed onto the planet.— _They were not in control of the ship._ ..Eli thought, sadly, as he piloted the _Vinsomer_ around the wreckage and decided upon his landing site.

  
  
  
  


**III. _ISD Chimaera,_ Auxiliary Hangar, 6 ABY **

Eli decided to land his ship in the Auxiliary Hangar on Deck Ten, it was closest to the bridge and had the advantage of being the hanger he was most familiar with. The small hangar on Deck Ten was also where Thrawn kept his personal shuttle and where Eli had left the _Chimaera_ all those years ago when he “disappeared” during that mysterious meteor storm. The Auxiliary Hangar had one last distinct advantage as a landing site for Eli’s ship- it was one of the only ship egress points on the _Chimaera_ that had not been completely obliterated in the crash- ISDs really were not designed for surface landings like this, the main docking bay and secondary hangar having turned into chasms of compressed rubble.

As his ship’s landing gear deployed, Eli’s heart skipped a beat with a fleeting feeling in his chest hope that approximated hope. 

The small flame of hope extinguished.

The Auxiliary Hangar was empty. 

_Thrawn took his ship and he escaped. He took his ship and he escaped._

Eli put his ship on lockdown and began to suit up, his mind racing.

_He’s probably landing on Csilla right now after an epic journey through the Unknown Regions. He’s alive. I bet he left instructions somewhere logical. He’s probably landing on Csilla right now..._

Eli snapped the last piece of tactical armor onto his arms and double checked his information recovery kit, making sure all the data cells were empty and charged.

_He took his ship and escaped. He had to, he took his ship and escaped. I don’t need these, these are just standard procedure. He took his ship and escaped._

Eli checked that his blaster and vibroblade were in working order before tucking the knife Ar’Alani had gifted him into his boot.

“ _And may warrior’s fortune smile upon you.”_

Thrawn’s voice echoed in Eli’s head and the hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. He froze as second and his mind luxuriated over those words and that familiar voice like pulling on an old sweater. Forgoing his helmet for comfort’s sake, Eli keyed the landing ramp open and stepped out into the gaping maw of the empty hangar. His boots clicked onto the tarnished metal floorplates of the Auxiliary Hangar a moment before his knees hit the ground. The _smell_ hit him like blunt force trauma. He wretched up the contents of his last meal onto the durasteel and heaved. But the sight, oh the sight, _that_ was something he would not be able to purge from his mind. 

Hollow, withered corpses in a state of partial mummification, alien fungi growing out from bleached bone and oozing red slime, knocked over machinery and crates rusting where the slime corroded the metal finish. Dim lights, still in emergency power mode, cast this hellscape in a dull, purple glow. And the bodies… they’d been _arranged_ , trails of blossoming flora and bloodstains behind them in their wake as some thing or someone moved them from their original resting place. The fallen crewmembers had been arranged in a line against one wall with like uniform next to like in a gradient starting with the white-armored troopers, to the grey enlisted staff and officers, finally ending with the black-uniformed officers and a lone death trooper. Eli noted that none of the corpses retained their rank insignia plaques. _Someone took their plaques and left their bodies to rot._ He wretched again.

Standing up on his feet unsteadily, Eli dragged himself back onto his ship like a sack of lead weights, sealing the hatch behind him before slumping heavily against a wall and letting out a long exhale. _Stars what’d I walk into?_ He thought, allowing himself a moment to simply feel the dizzying waves of raw emotion and fear rolling over him. He clenched his hands nervously and looked down at the fine metal band on his left ring finger. _Thrawn_. Eli had made a promise to the Chiss warrior and he intended to follow it through. He would do right by that promise in certainty and in times of doubt. He would have to be strong now- if not for himself alone then for Thrawn and whatever the Force had willed for him.

As emotionally settled (or perhaps numb) as he could be for the moment, Eli fell back into the routine of gathering the additional pieces of kit he would now need for his mission. He grudgingly put on his helmet- the one with a full face shield and integrated air rebreather- but unfortunately made specifically to accommodate Chiss faces and never quite fit him right. Next, he took an empty rucksack and filled it with a biological sample collection kit, a data retrieval machine, several small rupulsorlift drones to help move any large objects in his way, a powered grappling cord, utilitool, and a handful of remote charges. Finally, he turned to his side and motioned to THR-455, the reprogrammed IT-O droid that he and Thrawn had worked on together, to join him on this search mission that had dramatically become so morbid. 

Years ago when they were still stationed on the _Blood Crow_ , Thrawn had wanted a tool for better data collection and analyisis on missions. Together they reprogrammed and retrofitted a brand new imperial torture droid to become their mechanical assistant. THR-455 did the job amicably, though admittedly, it had taken years of Eli’s coaching and several of the navigators _painting hearts on it_ to finally soften the droid’s malevolent attitude. The navigators eventually renamed THR-455 ‘FloatyBear’ and Eli was pretty sure the petulant droid actually _liked_ its deceptively cute name. 

“Looks like I’m gonna need your help on this mission big time FloatyBear, it’s serious.”

The droid whirred in acknowledgement and bobbed at Eli.

“There’s bodies out there and I'm guessing we might find more on our way, accountin’ for all that ‘organic material’ sensors picked up in the orbital scan. I’d like you to start taking DNA scans of those we find on our way and make a list of the casualties. You can cross-reference your scan data with the ship’s medical records when we get plugged in to the _Chimaera’s_ mainframe. In the mean time, stay close to me, at least in the same room okay? And let me know if you find anything that points to foul play. Try an' get as much information about all this as you can. We don’t know what happened out there and it sure doesn’t look good.”

“Acknowledged, Eli-friend” it whirred in Sy Bisiti- the only language it had a vocalsimulator for. Just one more step Thrawn and Eli had taken when programming THR-455 years ago to guarantee secrecy between them. 

As Eli and FloatyBear departed the _Vinsomer_ together, helmet on and scanners set to a high-density mesh, Eli felt like he was geared up for war. War against his greatest fears possibly being made real in this mass grave

**IV. _ISD_ _Chimaera,_ Upper Deck Corridors, 6 ABY **

Taking the most direct path to the bridge, Eli noticed that a pattern began to appear in what at first had looked like random markings on the walls. There were blaster burns in neat arrangements over most of the doorways and several thin lines painted along the walls. It looked like someone had taken a paint applicator in their right hand and angled it at the walls while walking, taking care to keep the lines even to the point they blended in with the standard interior decor. Had there been some new memo regarding ship decor? There were three distinct colors of painted lines on the walls: white, Imperial grey, and an oily kind of black that looked more like hydraulic lubricant than paint. It also appeared that there were blaster burns on the floor near the body stains-turned mushroom blooms. These unsettling details combined into a macabre mystery as Eli pondered how this had all come to pass. He knew he’d find more answers on the bridge than in this corridor so he continued on. FloatyBear documented the markings on the walls and the spots where bodies had been removed before following Eli to the bridge, compiling a casualty list. 

The quickest path from the auxiliary hangar to the bridge was a familiar one for Eli, and he noted it seemed to be one that the mysterious Artist preferred as well. A white line of paint had continuously been marked on the right side of the corridors from the hangar on Deck Ten to the command deck One. Finally, Eli found himself rounding a corner to the entrance to the bridge. There were blaster marks all around the doorway and a kind of star drawn on the floor in front of it with what looked like smeared blood. 

And yet the blood on the doorway had not been the worst of it.

On the main promenade of the bridge, there was a massive, crudely-rendered map of the _Chimaera_ painted and carved onto the deck with the colored lines from the corridors also represented. A white line went from Thrawn’s quarters and office, the bridge, an officer’s medical bay, and back to Thrawn’s quarters again. FloatyBear investigated the bridge and began taking scans of the shattered windows and dim, causally flickering controls. The line painted in Imperial grey connected the bridge to an officer’s lounge, the cargo hold Thrawn reserved for experiments, the Death Troopers armory, and the nutrient ration storage hold. The greasy line seemed to connect completely random areas- mostly storage holds and landing docks- that were deliberately shot with three blaster marks, the auxiliary hangar being one such location. 

From across the bridge, FloatyBear suddenly beeped loudly to get Eli’s attention.

“Thrawn-friend!” It chirped proudly, as one of i’s scanning beams swiped over a faded stain on the floor.

“Thrawn?! Tell me what you’re finding, Floaty!”

“Oxidized blood residue… assumed to belong to Thrawn-friend as it is of Chiss makeup but damaged… multiple years old mixed with… unknown animal product. DNA not in database. Suggesting accessing bridge security feed for visual confirmation.”

Although the ship had been in emergency power reserve mode for years, the computers and most workstations were still operational as the solar power cells could run an ISD’s basic support functions almost indefinitely if undamaged. “Now let’s see what happened here, FloatyBear” Eli mumbled as he logged into an officer’s workstation in the what was once Commodore Faro’s ready room, and began to search through the ship’s logs to find the crash date. He referenced data from the _Chimaera’s_ navicomputer as well as the trajectory and time information given to him from Sabine Wren to find the actual date of impact on this planet. Thankful that the Mandolorian had given him truthful information after all, Eli let out a low whistle and felt relieved to eliminate at least one possible source for foul play- now he needed to pull up the visuals from that day and see what actually happened seven years ago.

**V. _ISD Chimaera,_ Commodore Faro's Ready Room, 6 ABY **

When he had first heard the story of the sky whales over Lothal, Eli thought his contact must have been drugged or was lying to him. Over time, he was able to gather more eyewitness accounts of the event that confirmed the actual arrival of whales from the stars. The Empire had shut down and quarantined the holonet around Lothal promptly after the incident and ISB had done an incredible job destroying all recordings of the _Chimaera’s_ disappearance, much to the Rebellion's propaganda department's chagrin. So it had been a stroke of fate for Eli to encounter Sabine Wren, one of the famed Lothal Spectres, and actually convince her to tell him what really happened back in those desperate times. The whole story didn’t sound any more believable coming from the younger Mandalorian woman, but she left no room for doubt in her telling of the events when she showed him some of their sensor data from a surly orange astromech droid. It had been her sensor data and recorded trajectory that had allowed Eli to calculate the planet’s coordinates. Too bad none of those eyewitness stories could have prepared Eli for what he was about to see on the bridge’s security feed.

  
  


Eli’s face blanched as he watched the man he loved pull a blaster on a child and shoot, eyes feral and expression hollow. And then the space whales- purrgil as they were called according to Wren- really did appear, shattering the transparasteel like it was nothing. Massive purple arms encircled Thrawn, and there was audible crunching heard on the holovid feed. Somehow the child communicated with the giant beasts, probably using his alleged Jedi powers to bend these monsters to his will. And then through the broken viewports on the bridge, the blackness of real space over Lotahl shifted to flickering cyan of hyperspace and the ship was wrenched away from reality. The pain on Thrawn’s face was open now, no longer hidden behind his usual stoic mask, before it rapidly morphed into terror when he jerked his head to the side and watched as most of the bridge crew were sucked out through the shattered viewports and into the vacuum of space. Eli _knew_ those people, they were his friends and colleagues who had all lives and families outside of the navy and now suddenly they were all just- _gone._ Simply bodies floating in space, not even a rank insignia plaque to send home or anything. Just more casualties who happened to be on the wrong side of the war. Thrawn’s head now hung in defeat and his whole body slumped weakly into the tentacles holding him aloft, the proud Chiss warrior had never looked so small and broken.

Eli paused the bridge holovid right as the ship hurtled into the planet’s atmosphere. He needed a moment to just set his head on the desk and sob. His whole body vibrated in pain and disbelief- so this was really how it ended for his love and his friends? A lonely fate that was equal parts improbable and violent? 

He took a few deep breaths and mentally readied himself to watch as the actual crash happened. Before resuming the feed, Eli pulled up another screen to give real-time ship damage reports in sync with the bridge visuals. The least he could do for Thrawn and the crew was have an accurate understanding of how they died and what actually happened that caused such a violent landing to occur. Perhaps this tragedy could be put to use for future emergency landing safety improvements. Clearly, having no active bridge crew nor surface landing gear played a substantial role in the destruction, but Eli knew the _Chimaera_ had other automated emergency procedures that should have lessened the impact of the crash, so what went wrong?

Typically in an emergency hull breach situation, electromagnetic pulses would have automatically fired and ordered emergency bulkheads throughout the ship to close in an effort to contain damage and save lives. Instead, it appeared that most of these bulkheads had remained open, resulting in a rapid and unconstrained change of pressure as the _Chimaera_ phased from hyperspace and into the planet’s gravity well. Many of the crew had been sucked out to their deaths through the numerous perforations in the hull. The space whales had not been gentle in their handling of the _Chimaera,_ ship data revealed over two hundred hull breaches of varying size throughout the once-proud Imperial flagship. Eli wondered for a moment how the whales had managed to phase through the _Chimaera’s_ shields- if one could figure out how to mimic that ability in combat well, that could usher in a new era of battle tactics.

The crew who had been safe in areas unaffected by hull breaches unfortunately suffered a more grisly fate than their colleagues who were lost in the vacuum of space. It looked like the space whales were draining the _Chimaera’s_ reactors at an unsustainable rate- all the ship's systems including, life support, reported radical fluctuations and shutdowns before the crash. Unfortunately, many of these systems needed bridge override to jump-force a restart instead of cycling through the automated (and sometimes tedious) rebooting process. Tragically, the systems that took the longest to reboot automatically were the air pressurization and artificial gravity generation systems. Once those two shut down they began to calibrate to match the external forces of gravity that were currently being applied to the _Chimaera_ as it plummeted through the planet's atmosphere. Simply put, bodies were not designed to hurtle through a planet's atmosphere unprotected. And so, the literal systems of the _Chimaera_ that were designed to keep the crew alive were now automatically calibrating to kill them.

Upon impact, the ship crumbled in on itself. The extreme gravitational forces generated by the _Chimaera’s_ size and momentum caused the architectural superstructure to collapse inward. Shock waves traveled from the nose and bottom of the hull up and back toward the stern. The _Chimaera’s_ nose broke off at the docking bay and spiraled to the side. Thankfully, the bridge took the least of the impact forces. Unfortunately, the hangar bays with escape shuttles and heavy machinery needed for any salvage operations took the most damage as their contents were forced against the upper decks and compressed. As the _Chimaera_ finally skidded to a halt, powerful forces of air were pushed through the ship and were violently expressed through the viewports and hatches causing them to rupture off and scatter in a haphazard debris pile haloing the fallen flagship. 

Meanwhile, on the bridge, the blue-haired boy, Ezra Bridger as he was known on Lothal, managed to levitate himself and Thrawn in some kind of protective bubble while the ship crashed onto the surface. Bridger stopped his force magic and landed on his feet while Thrawn collapsed limply onto the deck where he lay prone and unmoving while the boy looked around, his expression open and wild. Eventually Bridger force-levitated the battered Chiss onto a stretcher and took him down to the officer’s med bay- the one that was marked with white paint on the map carved into the bridge promenade’s floor. 

Eli watched as the young rebel handed an unconscious Thrawn off to the med bay attendant droids and instructed them to care for him. Bridger pointed to Thrawn’s chest, specifically at the dark bruising around his neck and ribs before turning and stalking out the door. He looked almost as haunted as Eli felt in that moment, struggling to comprehend the horror of what he had just witnessed.

It was all too much.

Eli paused the medbay recording at this timestamp and began to type furiously. First he, keyed open a new holotab. Typing in a few commands, the medbay video feed came up in this new display before a box appeared in the center of the tab. Eli tapped on the box, moved it on top of Bridger’s shape and typed in a few more commands. The display blinked and a line of code flashed as Bridger’s shape on the display now had a glowing blue outline. Eli entered in another line of code and the second display came to life. As Ezra Bridger walked out of range of the Medbay’s cam, the screen jumped from hallway cam to hallway cam until eventually, the teenage jedi was standing in the auxiliary hanger, appraising Thrawn’s ship a moment before dashing into it and piloting it away.

_Damn. So Thrawn didn’t escape!!!! What were the chances Bridger returned to rescue him in the last few years? Slim to none, probably, Thrawn did shoot the kid after all. Damn!_

Eli closed the holotab and looked over to the paused view of the med bay and keyed it on once again. He watched Bridger depart a second time and shifted his focus over to Thrawn. He watched as the medical attendant droids prepped and hauled Thrawn into a bacta tank. Eli’s command codes were still accepted in the _Chimaera’s_ computer systems, and since he also had the override codes for Thrawn’s medical files, he was able to key into everything the medical droids logged about Thrawn's condition after the crash. The Grand Admiral had multiple broken and fractured ribs, a punctured lung, internal bleeding and bruising, injuries associated with oxygen deprivation, much higher levels of cortisol than normal (and since when had Thrawn been so worried about his own health that he started actually monitoring his cortisol levels?), and a likely concussion. _Wait, what did “likely” mean? Didn’t Bridger instruct the droids to care for Thrawn?_ Rewinding the video and keying up the audio, Eli cringed as he heard the teenage boy explicitly tell the droids to “just fix this stuff” as he pointed to Thrawn’s torso before walking out the door. 

It was a fact that Imperial medical attendant droids were not known for their sympathetic bedside manner. Given a simple instruction, they would follow that order perfectly to the letter but they did not go above or beyond the scope of duty. And while they could provide incredibly thorough care, the attendant droids truly needed human guidance or a major upgrade in their decision-making cortex in order to be self-sufficient caregivers. So there had been no brain scan done at the time of Thrawn’s possible concussion. Hopefully it wasn’t bad enough that it didn’t prevent him from finding some other way to escape the ship.

Eli had been watching these security recordings at an expedited replay speed but now he switched over to the bacta tank cam and decided to slow it down to real time. He watched the feed of Thrawn floating in bacta for a long, sorrowful moment before releasing the breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He was so close to him and yet still so far away. He had been _here_ then but not here _now_ , as no human-sized lifeforms had been detected onboard the ship when the _Vinsomer_ conducted its scan. So where had he gone? Just what had become of Thrawn after the the crash landing? Zooming the camera in on Thrawn’s unconscious face Eli noted how even suspended in the bacta, mottled with severe bruising, and having just shot a child; tha he still loved the man and found him so exceptionally beautiful. His proud, angular features and the gracefully sculpted lines of his form were illuminated in the tank, the shadows clinging to the contours of his muscles and casting them in an eerie and artistically-erotic light. This close in the zoomed-in security feed, Eli noticed new fine lines on Thrawn’s face. That the hollows under his eyes seemed a bit darker than they used to be and there were now graying hairs fading in at his temples that had not been there the last time they had seen each other. Eli then recalled that dull, feral look in Thrawn's eyes while he shot the child and how small and weak he looked crumpled on the bridge deck. Their time apart after the grysk incident had not kind to Thrawn it appeared, the man looked ragged and spent.

_What happened to you, Thrawn?_

The fragments of what was left of Eli’s heart shattered and the dam broke. For the first time, real anger coursed through his mind and he slammed his fist against the desk in frustration. FloatyBear paused its data collection to bob at Eli apologetically in concern. _Stars, damn it Thrawn! I knew you lied to me about how bad it was. But this is- this is beyond... I, I tried to tell you then... ‘Get out now and come home with me, this isn't worth it anymore.’ Gods, WHY didn’t you listen to me? Why! What mission, what mandate, what PRIDE could have been worth this?!_ He sobbed again.

_Was it really worth this? Were you trying to make up for Batonn or for your exile? Did you think I honestly would have cared if we couldn't have stayed in the Ascendancy and we had to run from the Empire? I would have left the Steadfast for you- for us! And in a heartbeat, too. Between the two of us we had more than than enough intel we could have even joined up with the Rebellion if we wanted to. Maybe even stopped the Death Star from blowing up- NO! No I won't go down that road of what-ifs because, because, well, what if I never see you again? What am I supposed to do without you?!_

To Eli, a future without Thrawn in it simply didn't exist for him. Yet even as his heart was breaking his curiosity still managed to get the better of him. After his anger passed, he resumed the video feed at the increased viewspeed to see what had become of the love of his life.

The medbay attendant droids eventually removed Thrawn from the bacta tank and placed him on a hospital bed. There, he was dressed, tended to, and monitored by the droids; unconscious but condition stable and improving. On the third day of bed rest, and in a motion so quick that Eli had to pause and rewind the footage to catch it, Thrawn abruptly sat up in his bed, wrenched the IV tubing from his forearm, and sprinted out of the medbay.

Eli watched on the security cams as Thrawn darted through the corridors, frantically searching for something. Bridger, or a working shuttle perhaps? Thrawn's confusion and frantic distress seemed logical to Eli, considering that his last memories had been of his entire crew dying and his body being nearly crushed to death by the purrgil. Still, Eli had never seen Thrawn experience a full-blown panic attack like this and his heart hurt for him. What was worse was that Thrawn's frantic sprinting did not slow, he blitzed through the corridors and held his body with the rigid attention of a Chiss shock trooper deployed on an assault mission. Granted, the interior of the _Chimaera_ was a grim hellscape of scattered, bloated corpses that the now rebooted cleaning droids were beginning to drag into the hangars and cargo holds. _So that explains the bizarre arrangement in the Aux Hanger, but not why the rank insignias were missing. Did Thrawn take them?_ Maybe Thrawn thought Bridger was still on the ship and he was using some kind of mind trick to torment him? Still, he could have simply logged onto any workstation and accessed the security footage if he was worried about a threat to his safety, so why hadn't he?

Eli sped up the security footage to an even faster replay speed and followed Thrawn through the ship. Many times Thrawn ended up standing outside his personal quarters and yet did not enter them, instead he ran away. He seemed to favor visiting the Bridge, the officer's medbay he had woken up in, Eli's old office, one of his personal cargo holds, and the entrance to his suite of rooms; yet he never decided to enter his quarters. Thrawn’s behavior was beginning to appear more complex than a simple, albeit completely understandable, panic attack. After six hours of running though the decks, Thrawn eventually stepped inside Eli's old office (Thrawn had never had the heart to move another officer into the space after Eli "disappeared", and Eli had programmed his office door to open automatically whenever an external sensor picked up that particular shade of blue that was so uniquely _Thrawn_ ) where he paced for a moment before sitting on the floor in a corner and promptly falling asleep.

According the the ship's sensor logs, Thrawn's biosignature had been observed onboard for 86.4% of the total days since the crash seven years ago. He spent most of his either on the bridge or the cargo hold reserved for his personal projects. On the bridge, he often gazed out from the shattered viewports for hours before getting back to working on the detailed map of the ship. In his personal cargo hold, it looked like he was building a new signal beacon. And then there were also the many hours standing in front of the door to his quarters. Eventually, Thrawn left the ship through an egress point on one of the lower decks. Sensor data next detected his biosignature six standard days later. This pattern of roaming the ship, tinkering in the cargo hold, sleeping in Eli's office, and standing for long periods outside of his own quarters continued on for days and days at a time before Thrawn vanished from the ship again. When he was spotted on the security cams again, he was hauling the carcass of a large feathered catlike creature. Somewhere along the way, Eli's heartbreak and anger had morphed into unease and worry- what he was seeing on the cams was not normal behavior, even by Thrawn's distinctly not-normal standards.

Everything became surreal and horrible when Eli decided to skip ahead in time and pull up the _Chimaera's_ most recent security cam footage of Thrawn. He was last detected on the ship twenty-nine standard days ago. So he was still alive! But now the question is when would he be back? Keying in a few commands and equations, Eli worked out that Thrawn's usual departures from the ship were only for lengths of time between five and eight standard days with a two day plus on minus margin of error. Twenty-nine days was so far outside the standard data set that Eli couldn't explain it with an easy equation. In fact, it was _too_ far outside the standard data set. _Something had happened out there to him,_ Eli thought as he felt the worry congeal into cold dead inside him.

Thrawn was either dead in the wilderness or he was lost in the wilderness. He was not on the _Chimaera_ and Eli wasn't going to get any more answers about him from sitting and staring at the cam footage. Now it was time for him to make a plan and take action. Eli wondered if maybe there was a reason Thrawn could never enter his quarters all those years. Perhaps if he could get into those rooms he could find some clues that explained Thrawn's haunting behavior. Unhappy and dreading whatever he would find, Eli decided it was time to investigate, so he logged out of the medbay computer and stepped into the corridors, taking FloatyBear and a full data card with him.

**VI. _ISD_ _Chimaera_ , Deck Two, The Grand Admiral's Quarters, 6 ABY**

Following the white line Thrawn had painted along the corridor walls, Eli made his way down the familiar path from the bridge to Thrawn’s quarters. His left hand was reluctantly hovering over his blaster (set to stun) on his hip while his right traced over the white marking, it was comforting in a way to be connected to Thrawn again, if only by the thin, painted line on the wall panel. None of this made sense, but the crushing loneliness in his heart lifted slightly. _He’s not dead until I see a body._ Eli thought if he told himself that frequently enough, he might actually believe it.

He keyed into Thrawn's rooms and found that nothing had been touched. If Eli's override codes still worked, why had Thrawn not been able to access his own quarters? Was it some sort of pride thing where Thrawn thought he deserved to suffer or a Jedi mind trick? Eli swore that he would punch Bridger if the kid had intentionally messed with Thrawn's mind. The Grand Admiral's quarters were more or less in identical condition to how Eli remembered them to be eight years ago. Sighing, Eli decided to pack up a few of Thrawn’s favored possessions with reverence. He took off his helmet and gloves before trailing a hand along crisp white uniforms still hanging starched in a closet cabinet. Eli pressed his face into the wool and tried to imagine a pair of strong arms enveloping him. He placed one neatly-folded uniform into his rucksack as well as Thrawn’s favorite weapons- his two fighting sticks and a knife from Thrass. Then Eli stepped over to Thrawn's writing desk where he opened a drawer and pulled out the folio of real paper sheets Thrawn had procured years ago. The papers were full of charcoal drawings Thrawn had made mostly of Eli playing his mandolin or sleeping in their bed, though there were a few other portrait sketches of notable pirates and insurgents Thrawn had studied and worked diligently to destroy over the years. Also in the desk, Eli picked up the scarf Thrawn bought on his first trip to Lysatra, his old rank insignia plaques stashed in an empty vintage deathstick box, those atrocious green sunglasses he loved so much, the second journal he had started after Eli left, and finally perhaps most precious of all; an intricate braid made up of locks of hair from both of Thrawn's parents, Thrass, and himself. Each item in the desk was precious and so uniquely Thrawn. Eli held the braid reverently a moment before tucking it into the chest pocket of his tactical armor and close to his heart. 

There were too many items in these rooms for Eli to take with him in his rucksack. He would have to come back and make multiple trips for the rest of Thrawn's effects. Still, there was one final thing Eli could take. He walked into Thrawn's bedroom and decided to lay down on the bed for a moment. The sheets still felt the same against his face and hands, and the damn mattress was still way too stiff, just how Thrawn liked it. Apparently all Chiss liked sleeping on duracrete blocks but stars, Eli didn't care about how uncomfortable the bed was for once because he could swear that in this moment he could _smell_ Thrawn again. Laying in their bed, Eli could see all their memories in this place. The feelings of love and loss and so much longing flooded him. His fingers grasped at the sheets and pulled them over himself as he twisted and rolled in the familiar bedding. Eventually he realized the pillowcase his face was pressed into was wet- when had he started crying? When had he stopped? 

  
Eli packed the items from Thrawn's desk into a stuff sack and placed it into his rucksack as he prepared to exit Thrawn’s quarters. Already he was planning. Thrawn was out there somewhere, somehow. Eli knew it. He would take these items back to his ship, set up a ship-to-ship data transfer relay and download all of the _Chimaera’s_ data onto his ship. He had began to formulate the equations he wanted to run and information batches to sort by. Then he would begin running scans tailored by that information, cross-referencing the _Chimaera's_ surveillance data with his own atmospheric scans of the planet to find all possi--

Abruptly, Eli's plotting came to a screeching halt.

As he opened the door and stepped into the hallway, Eli very nearly tripped on one very bloody and unresponsive Chiss slumped on the floor in front of him.

_Thrawn._

**End Act 2, Part 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Sorry about that cliffhanger folks! I needed to cut this act into three sections before it really spiraled out of control. We will learn all about what happened to Thrawn in the second part of Act 2, which is mostly already written, just needs editing. In the mean time, here is a link to my tumblr, where I've posted a little spoiler of what's to come. (Okay actually a fair number of spoilers about what's to come, but they're all tagged)  
> Act 2 Part 2 teaser artwork and text: https://wildspaceyokel.tumblr.com/post/190489264219/do-you-think-hed-want-his-hair-cut-you-know
> 
>   
> 2\. In the second and third parts of Act 2, Thrawn and Eli are reunited at last (but why does this sound too good to be true?) and Thrass and his brotherly opinions will make an appearance. Also, this isn't the last we see of Ezra Bridger either, so keep an eye out for the teenage blueberry... After all, Sabine hadn't found him yet when she spoke with Eli on Lothal, so Bridger must be out there somewhere, right?
> 
> 3\. Thank you so much Revakah, Jessko, and Punk Kenobi for bouncing ideas back and forth with me about this fic. I really appreciate it!
> 
> 4\. If you have comments, criticism, or any other feedback, I'd love to hear it! This has been a challenging prompt to work with and I hope to do it justice in the chapters ahead. Thanks for reading along!


	4. Act Two Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eli meets Thrawn and has more questions than answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content warning:** This chapter contains detailed injury descriptions.
> 
> If you'd like to play some music while reading or beforehand to set the mood, I recommend this song to begin:  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/09wmCVfbacfG9N5AE0Vmsp
> 
> and then play this song when you finish or start reading Section IX:  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/0XLfb1nlqAA18soNVGAHpQ

> **Last time on in Suppression of the Mind:**
> 
> _Abruptly, Eli's plotting came to a screeching halt. As he opened the door and stepped into the hallway, Eli very nearly tripped over one very bloody and very unresponsive Chiss slumped on the floor in front of him._
> 
> _Thrawn._

* * *

> _Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation._
> 
> -Rumi

* * *

**ACT 2 PART 2:**

**VII.** **_ISD Chimaera_** **, Deck Two, The Grand Admiral's Quarters, 6 ABY**

“Thrawn? Thrawn!” Eli's voice rang out, cracking in disbelief. It took him a moment to really comprehend the sight before him. 

Thrawn looked— _different_.

Since Bridger and the purrgils had taken him away from Lothal; Thrawn's hair had grown out to the middle of his chest, briefly reminding Eli of how he had worn it when they first met. But unlike when Thrawn had been intentionally found by the _Strikefast_ , it didn't look like he had taken care of his appearance for quite some time now— his hair hung in matted, snarled clumps, clotted with dried blood and— other things; while his usually vibrant skin was dull and peppered with cuts and dirt. The clothing Thrawn wore was in no better condition than the rest of him: a mismatched assortment of tattered uniforms and trooper armor that looked to be dyed colors to match the landscape, battered plastoid trooper boots, a handmade knife hanging at his waist along with a standard-issue blaster, and what looked to be a cloak of some animal skin.

Eli dropped the items in his hands and ran over to the man before him. Falling onto his knees, he placed one hand on Thrawn’s shoulder and the other at the back of his neck, supporting his head so he could look into Thrawn’s eyes and appraise his condition. He couldn’t believe that this was actually, _finally_ happening; life took on a kind of dreamlike quality in this moment, simultaneously crystallizing and blurring around the edges.

“Oh my stars, Thrawn! Thrawn! You’re here, you’re really here! _I’m_ here too!” Eli laughed and wiped tears of relief away from his face, smiling down at his love before him.

Silence. And the creeping sense of unease began settling in.

_Why doesn’t he react at all?_ Eli’s eyes flicked down Thrawn’s torso a moment and he fought the urge to vomit again— Thrawn’s shit hadn't been dyed, it was _stained_. With blood that was still oozing, shiny on his chest. Wrenched from his joyful reverie, Eli sprang to action, forcing his mind and body into autopilot as he ran through standard emergency response procedures.

In addition to being slumped in a heap of filth; Thrawn had an opaque, far-off look in his eyes, like he was focusing on some unknown point in the distance. Eli wasn’t sure it was even _Thrawn_ looking back at him any more. He tried switching from Basic to Sy Bisiti to Cheuhn- yet none of the languages got any response.

“Oh no. No, no, no, no, NOOO….” 

Something was very wrong.

“Thrawn! Thrawn, _it’s me! Eli!_ ” He was begging now, pleading to the Force and anyone listening for acknowledgement, “I’m here for you, I’m here! Hold on I’ve got you!” 

Muttering a curse to himself, Eli tried to shake Thrawn’s shoulders to get him to snap out of whatever semi-catatonic state he was in. Then he looked over his shoulder and barked out some orders to the concerned droid hovering behind them.

“Find out where the nearest operational emergency response station is and a working medbay is for me- hopefully one within the nearest twenty decks but let me know if we have to go back to the _Vinsomer_ , and then get a scan going on him!” 

“Yes, Eli-Friend!” the droid whirred into action, plugging into a digital access port.

Frantically, Eli took inventory of Thrawn’s condition: _still breathing- good, bloody chest- bad...gotta check pulse, unresponsive- very bad, generally filthy- not good but not urgent. Check pulse and blood situation first._

Eli brushed the long, matted hair away from Thrawn's face so he could place two fingers against an artery in his neck and frowned. Thrawn’s usually strong and even heartbeat was fluttering weakly and far too fast. Eli leaned in a little closer to listen to Thrawn’s breathing, noting with dismay the wet rattling sound behind his irregular breaths. After listening a moment to Thrawn’s shallow breathing, Eli crinkled his nose in disgust as he noted a stench of rot uniquely different from what he’d encountered earlier in the auxiliary hangar and looked down to examine Thrawn’s chest wound.

The four deep parallel gashes on Thrawn’s chest were still slowly oozing dark blood and puss and clearly mad by some sort of animal; perhaps by those creatures Eli saw Thrawn bringing in on the security cam footage? Regardless, the wounds were bad, obviously infected, and looked like they needed treatment several days ago. Eli grimaced as he looked closer; he’d seen cross sections of Chiss dermal tissue in educational texts but never thought he would see them this close in reality. It didn’t look like the major blood vessels near Thrawn’s heart were severed, thank the force, and a slow ooze of blood was much better than rapid hemorrhaging. Thrawn still had time. For now.

Those dull red eyes lazily blinked closed. _Not good_. Eli shook Thrawn until his eyes slowly blinked open again before they closing rapidly, his head lolling back against Eli's hand and the limited tension in his body dramatically lessening. The injuries, the filth, the hair; all that could all be fixed, but Thrawn’s eyes… that faraway expression. His… seemingly total lack of recognition for him, Eli was becoming increasingly distraught. Were all his nightmares coming true at once? _Stars, I think maybe he’s going into shock!_

> **From Mako's Outer Rim Galactic First Responder Handbook Vol.3:** Shock is a life-threatening condition of circulatory failure, causing inadequate oxygen delivery to meet cellular metabolic needs and oxygen consumption requirements, producing cellular and tissue hypoxia. It is the final manifestation of a complex list of etiologies and can be fatal without timely management. While the effects of shock are initially reversible, left untreated it rapidly becomes irreversible, resulting in multiorgan failure (MOF) and death. When a patient presents with undifferentiated shock, it is important that the clinician immediately initiate care while rapidly identifying the etiology so that definitive therapy can be administered to reverse the shock and prevent MOF and death. Evacuation to definitive medical care is necessary, unless the clinician is accompanied by very proficient meddroids, rarely will they have all the resources needed to treat this fatal condition. It is not recommended to treat patients with bacta therapy unless their shock is due to low body temerature, in that case, bacta therapy is the most effective treatment to reverse the prognosis.

“C’mon Thrawn, we’ve gotta get you to the medbay. You’re hurt real bad and need to get patched up. You stay right there and I’ll be right back with one of the emergency kits. It’s gonna be like those evac drills we practiced, except this time you’ll be in the stretcher and not me. Hang on tight Thrawn.”

Eli desperately hoped his words would spark a flash of, well, _anything_ in Thrawn. Instead he sat there, mute and gazing off somewhere. He didn’t even seem to process the pain his body must be in and his eyelids drooped closed. This time they didn’t open again when Eli shook him.

FloatyBear whirred and chirped the location of the nearest emergency station and Eli sprinted down the corridor to the emergency supply kit at the turbo lifts. He tore off the emergency seal and pressed the command button causing a repulsorlift stretcher with attached medkit to fold out from the wall and a button on the panel flashed, alerting that the medbay on deck four had been informed of incoming patients. Hopefully FloatyBear’s data was correct- that the droids down there still worked and there was a functioning bacta tank. If not, he could probably find the supplies there that he would need to at least stabilize Thrawn enough before transporting him, somehow, all the way back to his ship. Eli was pretty sure the _Vinsomer’s_ compact medbay was kitted out well enough for fixing Thrawn, but it would never compare to the Chimaera’s facilities. Eli moved Thrawn’s limp form into a reclining position on his side, arm propped under his head to keep his spine straight.

In training, they called this the Recovery Position because it’s designed so that the patient doesn’t choke on their own vomit while you go get help. Except there wasn’t anyone for Eli to go get help from. But getting the patient in this position was one of the steps from his training, so that’s what Eli did, following the process mechanically. Next, he slid a thin sterifoam body pad off the stretcher and lined it up against Thrawn. Eli gently held Thrawn’s neck and hip while he rotated the Chiss onto the sterifoam pad with as little jostling of his spine as possible. He then strapped the bodily restraints around Thrawn before pressing a button to activate the electromagnets in the pad and stretcher. He watched as the pad clicked onto the rupulsorlift stretcher and locked in place. Eli then reached over and tucked a stray lock of blue-black hair behind Thrawn’s ear before he slipped an oxygen mask over his face and programmed the stretcher to rise up.

The stretcher was equipped to perform a cursory scan of patients on the way to medical. Floaty was performing their own scan as well, announcing its findings and the stretcher’s report to Eli as they jogged down the corridors. The results of damage to Thrawn’s body were extensive- traumatic internal and external bleeding, broken ribs, major organ damage, blood loss,infection, likely concussion, he was barely holding together like this. Why was this list of injuries so long?

_Shit shit shit._

**VIII.** **_ISD Chimaera_** **, Deck Four, Officer’s Medbay, 6 ABY**

In the medbay on deck four, Eli assisted a medical attendant droid in cutting off Thrawn’s filthy clothing when a flash of silver caught his eye. It was his betrothal bracelet, Thrawn was still wearing it above his left bicep. Eli smiled for a minute at it in disbelief while his heart imploded. Then it was back to work, holding Thrawn’s body and moving him from the stretcher to a surgery bed so the medical droids could prepare him for treatment. A new oxygen mask and breathing tube, catheter, and two IV ports in his arms were attached to Thrawn by attendant droids before the surgical droids kicked Eli out of the operating theatre and went to work. 

Eli watched from the other side of the transparasteel viewport as the surgical droids and their attendants saw to Thrawn’s injuries while the attendant droid with the most developed human relations programming kept Eli appraised of what was happening in the operating theatre. 

The first priority was dealing with Thrawn’s chest wound. The surgical droids focused on stopping the bleeding and cleaning up the internal damage to bones and organs caused by whatever had attacked Thrawn. Some _thing_ had clawed open Thrawn’s chest also left him with a nasty infection and he was given some potent antibiotics. Eli was beginning to think he’d need to go on a hunting trip and kill whatever had done this to Thrawn before they left the planet.

After the internal damage was repaired and broken ribs set, a second surgical droid began work on breaking and resetting Thrawn’s right arm where it hadn’t healed correctly. It made a clean incision into the flesh, isolated the bone and Eli plugged his ears to muffle the whirring sound of laser cutters going to work.

Some time later, the attendant droid that had been keeping Eli informed of the surgery spoke up, “Commander Vanto, the patient has been cleared for bacta recovery. As the grand admiral’s medical proxy, do you have further notes on his course of treatment?”

Eli cringed that Thrawn never thought to update his medical proxy information after he left, but found himself grateful that at least it was one less code for him to override. 

“If you’ve done all you can for him besides bacta, can you run a scan of his brain first? Then go ahead and put him in the tank- how long will he need it?”

“Approximately three standard days, Commander.”

Three _days_ , that was how long Commodore Faro had needed after the burns she’d received in the Clone War. Thrawn was still in really bad shape if he needed three days. At least he was getting the treatment he needed, finally, and it meant Eli had something on his side, _time_.

His mind drifted into analysis mode as he thought about where to begin. Gathering his tools, he slotted a datacard into the medbay’s workstation and began analyzing the _Chimaera’s_ medical logs while he tasked FloatyBear with setting up an information relay between the _Vinsomer_ and _Chimaera’s_ computers. He’d need to have access to the Chiss medical archives on his ship for what was yet to come. 

According to the medscans, it looked indeed like most of Thrawn’s injuries were caused by neglect. Eli mulled this over; even when he was alone during his ‘exile,’ Thrawn had always been fastidious about his hygiene. This level of personal neglect was not like Thrawn. And yet-- the man he found had parasites on his skin and hair. _Parasites_ ! And even if he had allowed his appearance to suffer as some kind of self-inflicted punishment for the loss of his mission and crew, Eli knew Thrawn would have at least set his broken arm correctly and kept himself fed- he always valued jobs done right and tools being properly maintained. This didn’t make sense, the _Chimaera_ had enough rations to feed the entire crew for _years_ , so why was Thrawn underweight, anemic, and nutrient deficient? Why had he not properly set his broken bones and sprained tendons? The situation was making less and less sense, with more possible threads of explanation disappearing by the minute. Could the explanation really be Jedi magic? Eli made a note to look into Jedi-related injuries in the medical archives and then clicked open the results of Thrawn’s preliminary brain scan.

Eli frowned as he scrolled through the data from the med scan- nothing was obviously abnormal. Maybe Thrawn’s disorientation was a symptom of shock? Current brain activity sensors attached to the Chiss showed that Thrawn was in a dream state at the moment. Eli wondered what he was dreaming about and put in a note to order a detailed neural scan when Thrawn was out of the bacata, he could then cross-reference that with the chiss medical data from his ship. 

Done for now with his reports, Eli stood up and walked over to look at Thrawn floating in the bacta tank. Bio metric data positively ID’d the suspended form in the tank as Grand Admiral Mitth’raw’nuruodo-- the Thrawn Eli loved and remembered from seven years ago-- but this man currently floating in front of him looked like a stranger. Eli placed a palm against the tank and leaned his forehead against the cool transparasteel, exhaling heavily. They were finally so close and yet still so far away. The number of questions Eli had only widening the chasm between them. What was Thrawn going to say when he woke up?

“Friend-Eli! Eat! It’s past-time for nutrients ingestion! And double-extra past time for sleep! Reminder: your species requires a minimum of eight hours of sleep per twenty-four hour cycle and it has been forty-two hours, nineteen minutes since your last sleep! Tactical analysis of the situation with Friend-Thrawn and _Chimaera_ is stable, Safety Level Eight. Advising human nutrients and sleep immediately. THR-455 will initiate mandatory tranquilization procedure of Friend-Eli in two hours unless it puts itself to bed. Friend-Eli… needs a nap!”

Eli groaned and dug a nutrient bar out from his rucksack, had it already been forty-two hours since he last slept? Time seemed to exist in a weird limbo on the wrecked ship, it was both the familiar past and a clawing, unsettling present reality that really… _didn’t feel right_. 

He absent-mindedly chewed on the bar while typing in commands for the medbay attendant droids to ready a bed for him to sleep on. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to leave Thrawn’s side again until he had some answers. 

  
  


**IX.** _**ISD Chimaera** , _ **Deck Four, Officer’s Med Bay- Three Days Later, 6 ABY**

Once Thrawn was out of the bacta tank and stable, Eli tasked the attendant droids to run a full cerebral neurological scan on the sleeping man. The medicomputer would take some time gathering and analyzing the data from the scan, so for now, all Eli could do was sit and wait for Thrawn to wake up.

He dragged a chair over to the side of Thrawn’s hospital bed and sat down next to him, taking the time now to really look at him. The bacta and droids healed the recent trauma to Thrawn’s body, but they could do little for the multitude of older scars that had already healed– and Thrawn had quite a few of those, Eli had cataloged and loved every one of them over their years together. Looking at him now, Eli noticed many new scars he was not familiar with; it looked like whatever animal had gored Thrawn’s chest had attacked him before– there were similar healed claw marks dragging down his thigh and along the arm he had broken at some point on the planet. Eli logged these observations in his personal datapad and looked somewhere off into the distance in mute stupor.

FloatyBear reminded Eli it was time to eat again, so he ate again.

FloatyBear reminded Eli to sleep again, so he slept again; this time curled up against Thrawn on the narrow hospital bed, mindful of the tubing still connected to him providing his love with fluids and nutrients.

Eli had slept a lot over the past few days because sleeping meant he didn't have to update anyone about his findings yet. He slept because his heart was more exhausted than his body. He slept because he wasn't willing to admit to himself that he was afraid of telling Thrass or reporting back officially on his mission; he honestly didn’t know what he would say if he tried to be honest about all– _this_. Instead he typed up a quick mission update stating he was still gathering data and hadn't found any survivors to speak with yet. Vah’nya, of course, would be able to see through his not-quite-lie, but she knew enough about the situation that she wouldn’t cause problems for Eli and pass this up the chain of command, not yet at least. Eli still had time to figure this out. He had time to eat and sleep and shower. He had too much time.

To quell his roiling paranoia while Thrawn was in the bacta, Eli brought his mandolin down to the medbay; it had now sat untouched since the Chiss was placed on the recovery bed. If words and medical tech couldn’t get Thrawn to wake up, perhaps some melodies strummed on the Wild Space instrument could do the trick? Eli’s vigil dragged on, and his ambling chord progressions morphed into cathartic ballads of longing.

Eventually his fingers hurt enough to stop playing so Eli put his mandolin away and blinked around the room. Not knowing what else to do, and not willing to leave Thrawn’s side, Eli dug out a comb from a supply bin and began to brush the tangles out of Thrawn’s hair, grimacing when he had to take scissors to cut out the mats that were beyond help. The bacta and sonic treatments had killed off all the parasites feeding off of Thrawn so Eli picked them out with a fine-toothed comb and swept the refuse away. 

While Thrawn had been in the bacta tank, Eli went to his quarters several times to gather intel and bring back a few of his personal effects to make his love more comfortable; notably two sets of pyjamas and a bottle of that hair oil Thrawn liked to use on the days he didn’t have to gel it back for duty.

Eli poured some of the juniper-smelling product onto his palms and ran it through Thrawn’s blue-black locks. The familiar forest smell of the product grounded Eli while he smoothed down static flyaways. He beamed a winsome, careworn-smile down at the sleeping man before him who, now a little bit shinier and free of parasites and tangles, was starting to look more like how he was supposed to look. Eventually and unthinking, Eli began idly running his fingers through Thrawn’s hair, the familiar sensations felt like coming home. Ghosting his fingers over the lines of his face, Eli traced Thrawn’s forehead ridges and cheekbones, circling back so he could learn the new fine wrinkles around his fiance's eyes. 

He was so close to Thrawn right now. _Finally_. Eli could breathe in Thrawn’s smell and revel in the the feel of his skin; he could celebrate the comforting steady (and healthy!) rhythms of Thrawn’s breathing and heartbeat. Eli knew he had missed this but he wasn’t fully aware of _how much_ he missed this. And so it was not long until Eli fell asleep leaning over Thrawn’s bed, arms casually embracing him.

**End Act 2 Part 2**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. If you're enjoying following along with these song recs, https://open.spotify.com/track/5fqmDN3kYyKePrgB9oGChj is a really good approximation for what's going on inside Eli's head at the end of this chapter, how do you think it will change when Thrawn wakes up?
> 
> 2\. Also, I increased the chapter to the count for this story again, whoops. (remember when this had a chapter count of 5? Pepperidge Farm remembers) The second half of act two got really, uh, intense so I cut it here to give everyone's heart rates a chance to slow down before the trauma onslaught in scene XI. On that note, how is the rating for this story? I put a content warning for gore on this chapter and I think this is about the most explicit I get with describing everything, but would rather error on the side of caution.
> 
> 3\. Haven't had enough pain yet and want some more? Remember that casual mention of a betrothal arm band Thrawn was wearing in scene VIII? If it sounds familiar that’s because it is. In my fluff fic ‘Cheuhn Lessons’ Eli inherits a traditional Lysatran betrothal bracelet from his grandma and gives it to Thrawn right before leaving the Chimaera. you don’t have to read that fic to read this one, but some of the background details will pop up here and there.
> 
> 4\. Finally, I would like to make a statement on the theme of this fic and the fact that there is another story currently being published with a similar premise. That's because tropes are awesome that this stuff happens all the time in fandom. So it looks like y'all are getting TWO different flavors of Thranto memory loss angst cake right now, yum! I've spoken with the other author about this and can't WAIT to read their work when I'm done publishing this story. We both have already written our works and are in various stages of editing so any coincidences in plot or story elements are purely that, the magic of two people crafting gratuitous Thranto suffering at the same time. If you're following along with both stories (and you should- I'm jealous I can't read it right now and am a glutton for pain) PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS! I want to respect their IP and my own story. Thank you in advance, I really really really want to wait until these are both done. 💙
> 
> Have a great day!  
> -Wild


	5. Act 2 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn wakes up and has a discussion with Eli. Thrass checks in on his brother. Ar'Alani has a new mission for Eli.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, if you'd like a song to listen to before reading this chapter to set the tone for what's to come, I recommend 'It Only Gets Much Worse' by Nate Ruess, here's a spotify link to copy and paste:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/61IsztUa3EPy7L0VyfUCAg
> 
> Then, if you'd like to put on some music to listen to while reading, I recommend this song to start with: https://open.spotify.com/track/2bD5NpTzUcsC8vZeGb3UMd
> 
> And then play this song at scene XIII: https://open.spotify.com/track/6ldrglMzTmoBHvdY3r7Bds
> 
> Without further ado, here's the conclusion of Act Two!

> **Last time on in Suppression of the Mind:**
> 
> Eli was so close to Thrawn right now. Finally. Eli could breathe in Thrawn’s smell and revel in the the feel of his skin; he could celebrate the comforting steady rhythms of Thrawn’s breathing and heartbeat. Eli knew he had missed this but he wasn’t fully aware of how much he missed this. And so it was not long until Eli fell asleep leaning over Thrawn’s bed, arms casually embracing him.

* * *

> _Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation._
> 
> -Rumi

* * *

**ACT 2 PART 3:**

**X _. ISD Chimaera_** **, Deck Four, Officer’s Med Bay- The Mind of a Sleeping Chiss, 6 ABY**

_He dreams of swimming in aqua springs. The color reminds him of the glittering caves he explored as a youth. Laughter with his brother as they ran through the chilled tunnels and pelted each other with snowballs. He had put shards of ice in his snowballs until his mother caught and reprimanded him. “Only hurt your enemies, and do so such that they cannot fight again. Protect your family. Always.”_

_Floating. Adrift._

_Familiar melodies are snaking into his mind from somewhere, a chorus of angels perhaps? Tendrils of almost-remembered words and faces to go with them. So warm and comfortable and his heart seems to beat in tune to the sounds._

_Were his people wrong about life after death? The question surprises him now less than it would have in the past, by now he has been proven wrong about many things. He has been so, so wrong._

_He drifts along, held aloft by… nothing and everything. Perhaps there really is an afterlife and this is it? It is not too bad, this, floating warm, hanging onto the wings of a song._

  
  


******XI. _ISD Chimaera_** **, Deck Four, Officer’s Med Bay- Patient Recovery Room, 6 ABY**

He wakes up and lies still for a moment, keeping his eyes closed. He will maintain the illusion of slumber a moment longer. He attempts to puzzle out what the warm weight is that is lying on top of him. The smell and warmth of the thing gnaw at his memories. He cracks open an eyelid just enough and looks, through long indigo lashes, at the sight before him. He reaches deep into his mind and remembers now, the weight on his chest, it appears to be... a human? 

_He knows this one._

Cadet Vanto? 

The room he is in is bright and sterile, too cheerful and well-appointed to be the brig, so where is he? Guest quarters on the.. _Strike-quick_ ? The human warship and his mission– he remembers his mission. This little human, Cadet Vanto, is sleeping on him, why? The alien looks older somehow, had he worn a disguise earlier? Had it been an attempt at lulling him into trust? Now though, his pose is too intimate and vulnerable to be anything other than a trap, and... is that a CDF uniform he wears? _How…?_

Whispers of paranoia cloy at Thrawn’s mind, like many arms closing around him in a tight embrace, the darkness in his mind intensifies. This must be a trap arranged by the humans, perhaps aided by his enemies. Was it already too late to seek alliance with the Empire? 

Vanto, who must be tasked with keeping an eye on him is failing miserably unless his slumber is an act. Already, Thrawn has observed much and is formulating plans. 

Ultimately, he decides a sudden attack is most likely to be successful against the human who is Cadet Vanto and also not-Cadet-Vanto. He scans the room. He notes a doorway and the various items he can use as weapons. The medical-looking equipment surrounding him likely for the barbaric torture that his reports said the Human Empire so favored.

He sends his consciousness out to the ends of his body, searching for injuries or points of weakness and finds none. Good. He notes the tubing still connected to his arm and he will be ready to ignore the pain when it rips from him. He rehearses the movements in his mind and his body prepares to roll over and lunge-- a quick attack to the neck should incapacitate easily enough. He shifts in the bed, flexes his fingers and toes, willing momentum into his form and allows a final exhale before he moves. 

One fluid motion and he is upright in the bed, his wrist angling towards the exposed column of tan skin but Cadet Vanto’s reflexes are faster, unexpectedly so. The little alien jerks awake and ducks under the blow, then rolls away from the bed in fear. He falls back and they both stare at each other, eyes wild and panting.

“Thrawn?” Vanto squeaks from his position sprawled out on the floor. He sits back and looks back at him appraisingly, strange brown eyes wide and shining, he forces a smile. Thrawn studies him for a moment. 

“Cadet… Vanto?” He asks finally, voice cracking from lack of use. He knows that the facade of threatening calm he works to project is at least visible on his features. His eyes narrow at the human; he knows he needs to at least _appear_ deadly in order to maintain control of this situation. Even though he still feels unsteady he will display no tells of weakness, he will not expose himself to attack. 

Willing tones of authority into his words to take command of the situation, he speaks again to Vanto. “You will explain this situation to me, correct?” He does not hide the implicit threat in his words and focuses his attention at observing his captor’s response.

Vanto speaks a mile a minute, babbling and still too familiar with him for his comfort. How does this alien know Cheuhn so well _and_ feel entitled to throw his core name around so casually? Perhaps the CDF’s intelligence was incorrect, or his people are more compromised than they were aware. He will find out soon enough.

“Thrawn! Oh stars, you’re finally awake. Don’t joke with me with that ‘Cadet Vanto’ stuff, okay? I really don’t think I can take any more surprises right now.” Those large, brown eyes seemed to be growing in size and producing water on Vanto’s face, bizarre. He continues speaking, or more accurately, pleading at Thrawn:

“It’s me, _Eli_ , and I’m already way too keyed up worrying about you for jokes.” Vanto stops his rambling to take a breath, he suddenly looks very tired and brittle. His acting is improving in this scene but it is still not sufficient to fool Thrawn.

Exhaling, the little alien continues, “and of course I’ll explain, as best I can anyway. You’re in the officer’s medbay on deck 4. I found you! You- you just showed up outside your quarters bleedin’ out so I put you on a stretcher and took you down here. I was hoping you could tell me more about what’s been going on the last seven years. I- I found the distress beacon you rigged up by the way. The droids here had you in for a round of bacta and did some work on you. Were you in the forest when I got here? Is there anyone else alive? What happened, Thrawn?”

“I do not--” he hesitates, alarm claxons chiming in his mind at the bizarre lies coming from Cadet Vanto’s mouth, “re--remember.” He had not been on his exile planet nor had he been on the Imperial warship for seven years, that amount of time was preposterous. This human thought him an idiot, and Thrawn was curious to see what else he would learn from this interrogation.

Vanto performs an excellent pout, strange liquid continues to pool at the edges his dirt-brown eyes before he fakes a look of confidence and speaks again, “Oh. Well, I can help you with that Thrawn. What’s the last thing you _do_ remember really well? It looks like that animal got you pretty good and the scans did say you had a possible head injury.”

More lies, he is _fine._ More likely this roundabout game is an interrogation technique designed to cause him to doubt himself and volunteer information to the little human. Well, Vanto would not win this game. _Not ever_. Thrawn’s trust in his mind is absolute, it was the one thing the Aristocara could never take from him after all. He will turn this strange game on his interrogator and shift the discussion in his favor. Attempting to soften his features into something resembling human curiosity, he asks his captor again where he is being held. 

“We’re in the officer’s medbay” Vanto responded patiently.

“Which is _where_?” Thrawn groans incredulously, Vanto is still giving him nothing, perhaps he should give him more credit as a spy? 

Cadet Vanto, _Eli_ , as the human demands to be called, is now looking directly into his eyes with some performative kind of pity. He does not look away when Thrawn intensifies his gaze in return, instead he puts clear effort into schooling his emotions before speaking.

“We’re on deck four of your flagship the _ISD Chi_ _maera_ , crashed on an unnamed planet in sector 467W the Unknown Regions approximately seven standard years ago after an incident at the Battle of Lothal.”

“I do not have a ship” he states matter-of-factly. Obviously, the Imperial’s scanners would have found any ship by now assuming their tech hadn’t regressed terribly since his encounter with Skywalker years ago. 

The little human blanches and forces a smile that does not meet his eyes. Then his face hardens.

“Now don’t be pulling my leg like that Thrawn, you’re really starting to make me worry. _This_ is your ship! We were both stationed here together for _years_. You made this your flagship when you were promoted to grand admiral and given command of the Seventh Fleet.” 

“I believe it is you who is ‘pulling my leg’ Cadet Vanto. A Chiss among the Human Empire’s admiralty? Enough with these theatrics.” He spits the words out with audible, distaste rolling off his tongue. He levels a challenging glare at the smaller man who now stands up and turns to face him, his posture bristling.

“Stop it, Thrawn! Why are you bein’ such a jerk?”

“I do not give you permission to address me by my core name, _Cadet Vanto_ ” and he allows poison to linger on the belittling title. “Furthermore, there is nothing _grand_ about me, certainly not this farcical ‘grand admiral’ title you say is mine. State your true purpose now and tell me, to what extent has your Empire’s intelligence network already compromised the Ascendency? Do not lie to me _Cadet,_ I. Will. Know.”

They are circling each other now, his arms raised in an offensive stance as he sizes up his short opponent. At some point he had gotten out of his bed and ripped the tubing from his arm. 

The strange, clear liquid is flowing freely down Vanto’s face now and the areas of his eyes that were previously white have changed to a pinkish color. 

“Thrawn! _Thrawn, PLEASE!_ ” 

Eli Vanto is not a very good spy if he thinks a plea to his emotions will work. Pathetic. Begging has been a look Thrawn never found becoming. On anyone.

“Go away, spy. Or try and do with me what you wish, your attempts to gain my trust will never work.” 

Face still watering, Vanto positions himself between Thrawn and the doorway, barring his escape. So be it then, the way out was through the little human and his hesitantly-raised arms. He would simply have to fall, just like the rest of his kind had already done so easily. Humans were a soft species after all.

Quick as laserfire, he grabs the length of medical tubing previously connected to his body and turns in a rapid pivot to strangle his captor with a choke hold. Simultaneously, Vanto began screaming curses at him, in Basic and Cheuhn (and who had taught him _those_ curses?), louder than Thrawn thought was possible for the little human. 

Immediately, he cursed himself then for falling for Vanto’s distraction. The spy deftly evaded and rolled away from Thrawn’s grasp before throwing a handful of small, hovering drones at him. The drones flitted about him, disrupting his vision and dividing his focus. He doesn't know if the drones are armed so quickly swats them away, crushing them under his bare feet and ignoring the pain blazing up his legs. The additional threats must be eliminated.

He is distracted by the chaos and does not track Vanto’s movement until he feels warm breath at his neck and a sharp jab in his thigh. Vanto, now embracing him from behind, has one hand wrenching his arm back at an angle painful enough Thrawn knows it will break if he moves; while his other brown hand holds a syringe with clear, cold liquid rapidly flooding into Thrawn’s body.

His limbs feel so heavy, and encroaching darkness increasingly-distorts his field of vision. He waivers on his feet and falls forward, Vanto staying with him the entire time in his cruel embrace, holding him close all the way down to the deck plating.

Thrawn tries to lash out one more time, not expecting success but because his pride demands that he not give up. Vanto’s hold remains steady, caging him in his bodily embrace of pain. Resigned, he sighs and hangs his head in submission, his body slumping lifelessly in Vanto’s arms. Darkness now, his eyelids closing on their own accord. Defeat. So this is his fate after all. 

A moment later and Vanto is releasing him. Thrawn feels the deck cold against his face and his body being turned against his will. Warm, alien hands are moving him onto his side. Arranging him. The face he has decided to hate is peering at him with mock concern, water still spilling from those alien brown eyes onto his own face. Disgusting. Is it venom? It matters not. He will. Not. Show. Weakness.

“Thrawn?! Oh Thrawn! AreyouokayI’mshoshorry… whe’lllfiggure’ish’out… Lookatmeeethwan, c’mon, c’monthwon... _Ch'ah ch'acah vah”_

Those last words almost break him but he will _not_ give his captor satisfaction. Stubbornly, with the very last of his strength, he turns his head away from Vanto and pointedly refuses to make eye contact with the human until the darkness finally erases reality for him. 

  


**XII.** **_ISD Chimaera_ ** **, Deck Four, Officer’s Med Bay- Patient Recovery Room, 6ABY**

The hours that followed were hell.

Eli held his unconscious love (who had just tried to KILL him) in his arms and cried until he didn't have any more tears left. Then he simply sat there, shellshocked, holding Thrawn close and rocking his body gently while his silent sobs rattled them both. He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that, with Thrawn in his arms, until the _Chimaera’s_ fire suppression system unexpectedly turned on.

Shocked, Eli instinctively rolled over to protect Thrawn with his own body while pink fire suppression foam spewed down onto them. Eli’s head ended up in the familiar hollow between Thrawn’s shoulder and neck with his arms wrapped tight around him as he pressed flush against him. He gasped in distress at his body’s physical response to being pressed against the long, familiar line of Thrawn’s muscled form before he relaxed against him for a guilty moment. Laying limply on top of Thrawn Eli could pretend, for this absurd moment covered in pink foam, that everything was fine. 

Once the onslaught of foam slowed to a light mist, the door wooshed open. Eli snapped his head up to see FloatyBear charge in– electroshock nerve probes and searing flesh pincers primed and ready, beeping out its warcry.

“Is Friend-Eli safe?! Friend-Thrawn defies behavioral parameters! Behavior not of friend, more similar to Gundark or Vagaari than friend! On probation status! Threat level assessment four! Friend-Eli should not be alone with Thrawn.”

“Turn off the foam, Floaty,” Eli commanded as he looked fondly at the cantankerous droid who was attempting to come to his rescue. He then looked down at the spent needle sticking out of Thrawn’s thigh, “and can tell me the expected time when this drug will wear off in Thrawn’s system? We need to figure something out.”

By the Thrawn was expected to wake up again, Eli had gotten him back in bed, cleaned the foam off them both, and had developed a plan with FloatyBear that he absolutely hated.

He hated that he couldn’t come up with a logical reason against putting his tactical armor back on. He hated the seemingly-infinite list of ways Thrawn could kill him that Floaty had generated until Eli gave in and strapped his charric to his belt. He hated that it was a tactically-sound recommendation to rid the room of loose objects that could be used in a fight. He hated the way he and the droid were waiting, armed and ready, at opposite sides of the room from one another. He hated the tactics and the weapons and the armor and the distance. He hated the way his body had responded to holding Thrawn earlier, while he struggled against him and the sedative’s effects to the very end. He hated the way he missed having Thrawn back in his arms even now.

Eventually, Thrawn woke up again and slowly eased into a sitting position. From his bed, he gazed across the room at Eli warily, eyes unblinking like a spooked animal, and said nothing. Minutes that felt like ages passed until Thrawn blinked and the tension in his jaw shifted. He pressed his lips into a thin line of simmering anger, hands are folded tightly in his lap while the rest of his posture is loose and relaxed, a combination of bodily tells that Eli knows screams danger. 

When he finally couldn’t take not knowing anymore, Eli cracked and spoke first, this time in Basic, open concern on his face. “Thrawn, oh Thrawn, are you feelin’ okay? I’m so glad to have found you but I’m really, really worried about you. You got hurt and weren’t acting like yourself a while ago. Do you– are you feeling any better now?”

  
  


Thrawn said nothing for a moment as his eyes raked over Eli’s armor, lingering on the rank insignia at his neck and charric handgun at his belt, and the barely-restrained anger on his face deepened.

“Tell me, which of the ruling families are you an agent for. Is it the Chafs who provided you with that uniform? Or does your empire already belong to the grysk and they directed their puppet to dress in a way to appeal to my sympathies.”

“Now that’s just mean, Thrawn, I don— “ Eli was cut off as Thrawn spoke over him.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo. Any previous permission you had of mine to use my core name is revoked.” Thrawn said as he got out of the bed and turned toward Eli, who stood as well in an athletic, wary stance. “You have been keeping secrets from me and are holding me prisoner. Your existence defies explanation. You. are. a threat.”

Like a flash of cobalt lightning, Thrawn lunged then. Before Eli could dodge the blow and parry with an attack of his own, FloatyBear unceremoniously dropped down from its hiding spot near the ceiling and promptly sedated Thrawn with a double combination of drugs and electrocution.

  
  
  


**XIII.** **_CDF Intelligence Corvette Vinsomer_ ** **, Captain Eli’van’to’s Office, 6ABY**

Eli keyed in The Syndic’s personal frequency and sat down to wait. He was taken aback when a concerned face promptly appeares. Syndic Mitth’ras’safis peered back at him on the holodisplay, the millions of parsecs between them doing nothing to hide the worry etched on his face. 

“Syndic Mitth’ras’safaris —” Eli began to formally address the elder Mitth brother before he found himself interrupted by him.

“Did you–?”

“— I found him” Eli finished gravely.

Thrass’s eyes sparkled and then he pressed his lips together in a frown as he reacted to Eli’s choice of words. His next question was hesitant, “Is he still—?

“Yeah, he’s alive,” Eli finished the Syndic’s question and watched as Thrass visibly melted in relief before his face sharpened again.

“Well where is my truant brother and why do you look like you’ve been sleeping in a trash compactor?” 

“He’s not—” Eli struggled to find the words, “um, well, I don’t think— he’s not _Thrawn_ . Thrass, something’s happened to him since Lothal and he– he doesn’t seem to remember anything that’s happened to him since he was picked up by the Empire, _seventeen years ago.”_ Eli looked down at his fidgeting hands a moment and returned his gaze to Thrass. He continued, “he kept calling me Cadet Vanto, my title when we first met and he was on that exile planet. I think he thinks he’s still in exile, from what I’ve seen in the _Chimaera–_ the way he hunts wild animals, the little camp made, and the distress beacon he constructed; it’s all identical to what we found at the camp he had made when he lured the _Strikefast_ in. Same distress frequency and everything. He doesn’t think the _Chimaera_ is even his ship.” Eli hesitated a moment before continuing, “Thrass, He- he tried to _fight_ me.”

Millions of lightyears away, the Syndic blanched. “He was not successful?”

“No, not this time, right now he’s not in very good shape- he lost a lot of weight and sustained severe injuries. I was able to incapacitate him pretty easily. Twice actually. Right now he’s safe under sedation. I hooked him up to an IV drop he can’t wake up from.”

“Hmm.” Thrass was silent a long moment with his forehead rumpled in concentration. When he finally spoke again, his words were cool and measured, “you should probably keep him like that, safe from himself for a little bit longer. What have you learned from analyzing the ship's logs? Have you found anything to explain his behavior?”

Eli lapsed into report mode now. Data analysis was something he could talk about all day. He could even almost pretend he hadn’t been analyzing Thrawn’s bizarre actions with increasing worry and dread. “Nothing good,” he began, “obsessive behavior patterns, inability to access ship computers, nearly killing himself multiple times on hunts, taking apart and reassembling machines but not operating many of them. He painted a giant map of the ship for some reason on the bridge and never entered his personal quarters once. Stars, he never even logged into any of the secure workstations. I’ve got a program analyzing all the footage, but it looks like he did nearly the same thing every day for the last six years while his health slowly got worse and worse. His hair’s even started going grey”

“Oh. That is unsettling. Not like him at all. You were sure there was no trace of brain injury to explain the violence?” 

Eli looked at Thrass sadly, “nothing the _Chimaera’s_ most detailed medical imaging tools could find. It’s like he just decided the last seventeen years don’t exist anymore. Do you have any thoughts on what it could be?”

“Honestly Eli, I’m having trouble believing a word you’re saying about my brother. Except for the fact that he’s gone grey before myself of course, Thrawn never had the ability to relax. He really addressed you as ‘Cadet Vanto’?” Eli nodded glumly, “I’m curious how he will talk to me. I would like to speak with him myself.”

“It’s not a bad idea to see how he reacts to a different face. But he’ll need a bit to come off the drugs first and I’ll have to set up a holoprojector in the medbay.”

Thrass hummed again in thought before speaking his next words carefully. “I think I would like to try an experiment. Do you think you could get my brother into a spare cabin on your ship and rig up the holoprojector there? If Thrawn truly thinks he’s back in exile, maybe putting him on one of our ships and giving him a CDF uniform will jog his mind? It’s possible that the bland hideousness of those military uniforms and my beautiful face will improve his mood enough that he will explain himself? I can be standing by on a holo ready when he wakes up.”

Eli glanced at the display and noted the timestamp on Csilla. “Isn’t it pretty late for you Thrass?”

“Yes, well this is my little brother whom I haven’t seen in almost twenty years so I think I can stay up tonight and rearrange my schedule tomorrow in order to see him.”

“Okay then, I’ll get him over to the _Vinsomer_ and cleaned up. We can probably set up the comm and wake him up in about two hours. Uh, While I’m fixing him up, do you think he’d want his hair cut? You know, while he’s still asleep?”

The Syndic’s face softened. “Absolutely not! But bless you for thinking about that. He _hated_ having to cut his hair upon joining the Empire. It was one of the first things he complained to me about in his reports. That and how he was pretty sure that you were an agent from ISB assigned to spy on him.”

Eli chuckled, then looked down sadly. “That sounds about right. I mean, he did try to kill me and all. I’d always wanted to beat him in combat, Thrass, just not in a situation like this.”

“I know and I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now Eli. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Find out all you can about Chiss reactions to force-related head injuries— and can you work on locating a discreet psychologist to analyze the cam footage?”

“—I meant is there anything I can do to help _you_ , Eli?”

“Oh. Uh. I’m okay.”

“No you’re not, and don’t try to lie to me, _Ivant_ ,” Thrass used the name jokingly and it brought a smile to Eli’s lips. “I will know.”

Eli shuddered at the similarity of Thrass’s words, how he unconsciously mirrored his brother’s threat. He shrugged his shoulders and exhaled.

“Really, don’t worry about me Thrass, I’ll be fine.”

He clicked the comm off before the Syndic could respond.

  
  


**XIV.** **_CDF Intelligence Corvette Vinsomer_ ** **, Officer’s Conference Room 6ABY**

In his cabin on the _Vinsomer_ , Eli flopped onto his bed and watched the security feed livestream on his datapad. The brothers had been talking for fifty-three minutes now and showed no sign of stopping, so he might as well get comfortable. It unnerved him to see how, without him around, Thrawn looked so at ease while he spoke with Thrass. Dressed in a black CDF officer’s uniform with no rank insignia, Thrawn had easily combed back his hair with his fingers and gathered it into a graceful, looped knot at the back of his skull. Eli watched through a cam as Thrass cut a joke about the Chafs unique brand of ineptitude and Thawn’s lips pressed into a thin smile. They were needling one another and bantering as if no time had passed at all.

Eli’s heart began to slow down.

He watched as Thrass wished Thrawn well on his mission and told him that Ar’Alani was already moving pieces into play for a new coalition, so Thrawn had better finish up his mission soon. 

Talking to Thrass, Thrawn seemed happier and more animated, but still had a hesitant sort of aloofness to him, like the fine edges of his personality were blunted. Putting his political interrogation skills to work, Thrass asked Thrawn a series of roundabout questions to gain an understanding of where his mind was. Strangely, Thrawn didn’t remember seeing Eli in the med bay at all. Nor did he remember any of his time on the _Chimaera._ According to Thrawn, his last command was the _Springhawk_. When asked about the empire, Thrawn thought he had been picked up by the _Strikefast_ and vaguely recalled speaking to someone in Sy Bisiti but now guessed it was a dream he’d had in advance of being brought to the exile planet. In fact, Thrawn had thought that this call was his last goodbye.

Eli watched as Thrass gulped and spoke delicately, “Well Thrawn, I’m going to do one thing that will be awkward for both of us then, since it’s goodbye for now, but I think not forever.” The projected form of Thrass reached out and slowly hugged Thrawn, who blinked like a startled Tooka and bristled for a moment before eventually hugging back. “I miss you already Thrawn. And I have faith in you, may warriors fortune smile upon you.” 

Eli scowled and muted the rest of the conversation, idly tumbling the silver band on his finger. 

  
  


**XVI. _CDF Intelligence Corvette Vinsomer_** **, Captain Eli’van’to’s Office, 6ABY**

“Having spoken with him over the last few days and seeing the footage you sent me, I do not think he would be happy here on Csilla," Thrass said. "He still thinks he was recently exiled. He would have to live in hiding at the Mitth compound or be given a false identity which I don't think he'd be able to maintain. I believe he would try and eventually escape our home, thinking he could pull some grand gesture but forgetting himself along the way. Look how often he left the _Chimaera_ and eventually returned with hunted animals, and the injuries to himself that occurred. Look at how often he just stands, staring into a corner in his cabin! If the authorities found him and decided against execution, then he would be declared an invalid and ward of the state. Essentially, he would be involuntarily committed into a mental hospital for the rest of his life."

Eli groaned while Thrass continued on, "I pulled his files, and there are no legal documents of his in the Csillian archives that state he has an heir or give anyone power of attorney. As the Mitth family Syndic, I would execute his will and oversee the settling of his affairs. However… you two have promised yourselves to one another, yes? In the way of your people. Does Thrawn have a will in the empire?"

Eli wondered to himself, _did Thrawn not have a will on Csilla because he didn't think it would matter? Did he think he was going to die alone in the empire?_ His thoughts tumbled morosely while he logged into the _Chimaera’s_ archives to search for Thrawn’s legal documents. In one of the HR databases, Eli found a single line of text regarding Thrawn's benefits package. 

> _"If I fall in service to the Empire, transfer my possessions to Ensign Eli Vanto of Lysatra."_

Eli’s jaw dropped. _Ensign_?! Thrawn had willed himself to Eli before they had even- wow. When he was still an ensign. He pushed his hair back and leaned his forehead against his hands, letting the weight of Thrawn’s faith in him feel. For so long, Thrawn had always made sure that Eli would be taken care of, now it was time for Eli to return the favor and care for Thrawn. He would find a way to help him remember and if he couldn’t do that, he would keep Thrawn safe from being locked up in a Chiss asylum.

He must have been sitting in mute silence for some time until Thrass cleared his throat and began speaking again.

Well, that note and the trinkets you’ve exchanged certainly prove you have a say in handling his future. I suggest we contact his other keeper and get her input.” Thrass said softly, his struggle with projecting a collected appearance becoming more evident.

Eli huffed in annoyance.“Yeah, not a bad idea Thrass, I’ll send her a report and we’ll coordinate another meeting. And I think we should both try and get some sleep in the meantime.”

**"** Agreed, Eli. Are you sure there isn’t anything I can—”

“Goodnight, Thrass!” Eli spoke over the Syndic and keyed off the comm before he could finish. He then typed up a quick status report and sent that along with a request for conference to Admiral Ara’lani.

Eli glanced over at the camera feed of Thrawn then, he seemed resigned but at ease with himself, clearly thinking he was being transported to his exile location. Willing himself to look away from the image of Thrawn, Eli instructed FloatyBear to monitor him and keep him confined to the cabin. Exhausted, he rolled over in his bunk, wrapped in a cocoon of the crimson sheets he’d taken from Thrawn’s quarters, and drifted into a fitful sleep.

By the time Thrass and Eli were able to arrange a meeting with the admiral, Thrass had had another three chances to speak with Thrawn. As he had been the first time, Thrawn was surprised and happy to see his brother before his exile. In all the years since his exile, Thrass had never told anyone about how hurt he’d been when the CDF shipped Thrawn off without letting him say goodbye. Running through their farewells four times now was beginning to take a toll on the Syndic and his expression started to mirror Eli’s careworn visage of ragged fatigue. While Thrass and Eli took some comfort in their mutual heartbreak, their patience with the situation was running thin. They were running out of answers for Thrawn’s behavior while their list of questions only grew. 

So it was with great relief when they could finally coordinate a conference comm with the admiral. 

“Syndic, Captain,” her stern expression covering a tone of concern she addressed the two, “am I correct that Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s condition has not improved?”

Their mute expressions confirmed Ar’Alani’s suspicions and she continued. “That is most unfortunate. It appears that for now, his fate rests in our hands. I have read your reports and would like to know what suggestions you have for him.”

“We were hoping you could help us with that, Admiral. Our brainstorming hasn’t exactly been productive.” Eli said.

Thrass then cut in, “after evaluating his legal status and documents, we believe that at best he would be a clandestine prisoner of my home and never escape. More than likely he would eventually be found and committed to a ‘healing house’ where he would spend his days in a padded room with a lock on the door.”

Ar’alani frowned, “unfortunately, I believe the Admiralty will determine him to be too great of a risk, or _asset_ , to live a life of civilian confinement. It is very possible that he would be requisitioned by the CDF for a forced retrieval of his memories.”

“They- they can do that now?” Eli asked, stunned. Ar’Alani paused and spoke delicately.

“Not… _well_. And you did not hear that from me.”

“He can’t go back there” Eli said emphatically.

“Nor can he fester alone on that planet.” Thrass cut in, “nor can _you_.”

“I agree” Ar’Alani said, “but we cann—”

“—Then I’ll take him. We can go somewhere that’s not in the Ascendancy and figure out a way make him better. What used to be the Galactic Empire is a mess right now. We can set up a base somewhere, maybe Lysatra? I’ll step down form my command and continue working on the Skywalker Project. Maybe also keep tabs on the New Republic?”

“That is too much to ask of you, Eli” Thrass sad softly.

“I know it’s a lot, but I want to. We made a promise to each other and I intend to keep it.”

The three of them stared at one another on silence for a while. Ar’Alani scrolled through her datapad and scowled before speaking decisively “I do not like it, but I will see to your transfer, Captain Eli’van’to. We currently have need of a listening post in that region to assess the threat of this New Republic and those who would benefit from the uncertainty. Overseeing a listening post would allow you to keep your rank and oversee a small intelligence task force.”

“With respect, I’m mostly concerned for Thrawn,” Eli cut in.

“And you are capable of very much. I do not think he would want your talents languishing to play his nursemaid. We will tell him his exile has been changed to a remote research posting of some kind. Now, I will see what I can accomplish on my end and have a proposal for you two within 3 standard days.” Ar’Alani’s tone did not allow for questioning.

“In the meantime, Eli, I think you should keep my brother mostly asleep so he stays out of trouble.” Thrass said. “I can comm him at these times to keep him entertained.”

Eli hesitated a moment before speaking, "you know, I feel pretty guilty about this."

Ar'Alani sighed. "The honor is questionable, but would you rather have him be committed?"

"It being the least evil choice still doesn’t make it good." Eli responded. 

"I know," Thrass said softly. "But think about what he would want. To be isolated and fester? To be a test subject and prisoner? If you can treat him with respect and all him to continue serving the CDF I sincerely believe that is what he would want Captain.

"I still feel terrible for ‘lying to Thrawn and manipulating him."

“Then do not lie. I will record a comm for him stating these are his new orders, he will not question me” Ar’Alani said.

"Yes sir." The admiral's tone left no room for argument and conversation ended. Eli cringed at whatever this would do to his mind. He felt so guilty about this but didn’t know what else they could do 

  
  
  
  


**XVI.** **_CDF Intelligence Corvette Vinsomer_ ** **, Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s Cabin, 6ABY**

“Good morning, Mitth’raw’nuruodo.“

He has already been awake for some time when the door to his cabin chimes open and the alien who calls himself Captain Vanto enters. The human places a mug of caf in front of him while he drinks from his own. Unfamiliar with the beverage, Thrawn takes a sip. It sparks a memory in his mind of a sunny, rustic kitchen, surrounded by humans and Vanto— younger then with eyes relaxed and bleary from sleep; not the careworn, hard-edged man sitting across from him. 

Thrawn wonders at the memory and then in an instant, the hazy thought passes through him, like the steam floating off the warm beverage in his hands.

“I was hopin’ we could discuss your mission a bit today. Syndic Mitth’ras’safris and Admiral Ar’Alani have been working on a revised mission for you that will include both of us. if you’d be willing to hear it from me I can tell you, or you can watch the holo from them.”

“Cadet Vanto?” He looks at the human before him. _Eli…_ the name was familiar on his tongue, like putting on an old uniform. His mind conjures a fresh-faced human youth with a nervous bearing, speaking to him in hesitant Sy Bisti. The man in front of him looked similar enough to the young cadet he vaguely remembers except, well, he isn’t so young any more, nor is he dressed as an Imperial agent.

The alien before him is still fit and trim, yes, but where Thrawn recalled soft edges to his features and meek posture, there is now a honed sharpness to his bearing typical of seasoned warriors. 

“Actually, It’s Captain Vanto, Commander.” Eli nonchalantly tapped on the rank insignia, “I’ve been with the CDF for several years now prior to attaining the rank of Commander in the Galactic Empire. You did meet me years ago when I was a cadet, unfortunately in the years since, the galactic empire did something to mess with your head and the CDF chose me to extract you.”

“That’s preposterous”

“Yeah, well, you know how it goes, strange things happen in wartime and all. It’s pretty crazy we were even able to extract you. Here’s a debrief on the operation for you to pursue after our conference.” He hands him a datapad 

“Conference?”

“Yeah, We have new orders regarding your mission Mitth’raw’nuruodo. That’s right, I said we, I’ve been moved to this assignment as well, the Admiral believes our skill sets will complement one another’s really well. We are going to the planet Lysatra on the border of Wild Space where we will establish a remote listening station and intelligence base. There, we will rendezvous with navigator-commander Vah’nya for more orders and a tech delivery. I will continue my work on several intelligence projects and you will study the New Republic to see if they would be a valid ally for the Ascendency. Now c’mon, we don’t want to keep the Admiral waiting.” Eli’van’to speaks confidently, yet carries tension in his shoulders. Despite himself, Thrawn feels an instinct to trust the man even if he doubts the words he says.

The incoming holoprojection of Admiral Ar’Alani that follows is real. Very real. He knows that now is not the time to outwardly question authority. He will fall in line and follow orders. He will not question his Admiral, or this Captain Eli’van’to. Not for now anyway. 

From his cabin, he watches the planet below him disappear through the viewport. The stars of real space melt into a cyan blur for a time before eventually reverting to black stillness. A warm sienna glow washes into his cabin, it is the reflection light from a topaz planet he does not recognize but seems to know already. It must be the location of the listening post- Lysatra.

He reflects that this new mission is a second chance instead of wilderness exile. It is a gift he will take full advantage of. He will prove his worth to the CDF. And perhaps one day he will even be allowed to say goodbye to his brother.

  
  
  
  


**End Act 2**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for following along with this everyone! I really appreciate all your feedback and comments on this! As much as I enjoy wallowing in angst writing, the last week has been really really challenging for me to focus on fictional angst when the real-world angst has been so intense. 
> 
> That's it for Act 2, up next in Act 3 is a lot of what I'd like to call "sad fluff" as Eli and Thrawn focus on their new missions and learn to live together. Expect lots of challenges and a few breakthroughs along the way.
> 
> Speaking of challenges, I hope you're all taking care of yourselves out there and staying as healthy as possible! My work has shut down due to Covid-19 but my inbox is always open- say hi on tumblr! I'm @wildspaceyokel and would love to hear from you.


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